Stochastic spectroscopic imaging

Abstract

Noise excitation in imaging provides a significant RF power advantage over pulse excitation. Therefore it is of particular interest for the imaging of large objects in biomedicine and materials science. The theory of stochastic back-projection imaging with constant gradients is described, details of the experimental procedures are given, and results on small phantoms with and without spectroscopic resolution are presented. For imaging with RF coils of 3 cm in diameter, the excitation power was 0.1 W, corresponding to a reduction in RF power by a factor of 10³ in comparison with 90° pulse excitation.