| CPC G01R 33/4816 (2013.01) [G01R 33/4818 (2013.01); G01R 33/50 (2013.01)] | 17 Claims |

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1. A magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, method comprising a sample set in a magnetic field, B0, along a longitudinal direction so that the magnetization of the sample is initially parallel to said direction of the magnetic field, wherein said method comprises performing an imaging scan of a sample based on a ZTE sequence,
the imaging scan comprising the following steps:
a) applying a slice selection gradient pulse, GSS, followed by at least one radio frequency excitation pulse generating a transverse magnetization of the sample with respect to the direction of B0;
b) applying a slice selection pulse sequence comprising at least one rf pulse for selective locking of sample magnetization corresponding to a single 2D slice of the sample;
c) applying a preservation pulse sequence comprising at least one rf pulse, for keeping magnetization coherence of the selected 2D slice, and additionally comprising the termination of GSS and the onset of a readout gradient pulse, Gro;
d) performing the encoding, readout, and acquisition of the FID signal of a sample radial spoke defined by Gro;
e) repeating the steps (a-d) along a plurality of readout directions in order to gather a corresponding number of radial spokes in the k-space plane, corresponding to the 2D slice of the sample;
f) processing the FID signals gathered in steps a)-e) and reconstructing an image of the 2D slice of the sample.
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