Desperately Seeking: Non-Balanced Steady State Free Precession Fluid Signal

Musculoskeletal (MSK) imaging benefits from increased resolution at higher fields, as this may improve diagnostic accuracy and confidence. Especially 3D double echo steady state (DESS) sequences, offering a high contrast between cartilage and joint fluid, have gained increased interest for high resolution MSK imaging. Here, we resolve the reason for a prominent loss of contrast between fluid and tissues, as observed with high resolution DESS imaging, but being inherent in all non-balanced SSFP sequences. We will show that for anisotropic scans the contrast between fluids and tissues can be almost completely restored using an alternative dephasing concept for non-balanced SSFP