# Efficient high-resolution RF pulse design applied to simultaneous multi-slice excitation

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a fast, second-order optimization method for designing high-resolution RF pulses, significantly improving convergence speed in multi-slice MRI excitation, validated through experiments on a 3T scanner.

## Contribution

It presents a novel trust-region CG-Newton method utilizing exact second-order information for RF pulse design, enhancing efficiency over traditional gradient-based approaches.

## Key findings

- Faster convergence in RF pulse design.
- Successful application to multi-slice excitation.
- Validated with phantom and in-vivo experiments.

## Abstract

RF pulse design via optimal control is typically based on gradient and quasi-Newton approaches and therefore suffers from slow convergence. We present a flexible and highly efficient method that uses exact second-order information within a globally convergent trust-region CG-Newton method to yield an improved convergence rate. The approach is applied to the design of RF pulses for single- and simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) excitation and validated using phantom and in-vivo experiments on a 3T scanner using a modified gradient echo sequence.