Magnetic resonance method and apparatus with reduction of artifacts by a combination of spair pulse and saturation pulse

A magnetic resonance (MR) apparatus comprising:

• an MR data acquisition scanner that generates a basic magnetic field having a field homogeneity in an imaging volume of the MR data acquisition scanner, said imaging volume having an edge region in which a magnitude of said basic magnetic field differs by no more than 30 ppm from an magnitude of said basic magnetic field in said imaging volume;
• a computer that generates control signals and provides said control signals to said MR data acquisition scanner in order to operate the MR data acquisition scanner so as to acquire MR data from a volume segment of an examination object situated in said imaging volume, with said edge region being adjacent to said volume segment;
• said computer being configured to generate said control signals and to operate the MR data acquisition scanner by radiating a SPAIR (“Spectrally Adiabatic Inversion Recovery”) pulse that acts on nuclear spins in the examination object in a first predetermined frequency range, radiating a saturation pulse which acts on nuclear spins in the examination object in a second predetermined frequency range, activating a spatially encoding magnetic field gradient at a same time as said saturation pulse, and thereby causing said saturation pulse to act on said edge region in order to saturate an MR signal produced by nuclear spins in the examination object originating from said edge region, activating spoiler gradient fields that destroy a transverse magnetization of said nuclear spins at said edge region, and radiating an RF excitation pulse that is adjusted to the SPAR pulse;
• said computer being configured to generate said control signals and to operate said MR data acquisition scanner in order to acquire MR data from said examination object after radiating said SPAR pulse, said saturation pulse and said RF excitation pulse, with the second frequency range adjusted to the first frequency range;
• and
• said computer being configured to enter the acquired MR data into a memory and to make the MR data in said memory accessible, via said computer, in electronic form as a data file.

A non-transitory, computer-readable data storage medium encoded with programming instructions, said storage medium being loaded into a computer of a magnetic resonance (MR) apparatus comprising an MR data acquisition scanner that generates a basic magnetic field in an imaging volume within the MR data acquisition scanner, said imaging volume having an edge region in which a magnitude of the basic magnetic field differs from a magnitude of the basic magnetic field in the imaging volume by no more than 30 ppm, said programming instructions causing said computer to generate control signals in order to operate said MR data acquisition scanner to:

• generate control signals in a computer and provide said control signals from said computer to said MR data acquisition scanner in order to operate the MR data acquisition scanner by:
• radiating a SPAIR (“Spectrally Adiabatic Inversion Recovery”) pulse that acts on nuclear spins in the examination object in a first predetermined frequency range;
• radiating a saturation pulse which acts on nuclear spins in the examination object in a second predetermined frequency range;
• activating a spatially encoding magnetic field gradient at a same time as said saturation pulse, and thereby causing said saturation pulse to act on said edge region in order to saturate an MR signal produced by nuclear spins in the examination object originating from said edge region;
• activating spoiler gradient fields that destroy a transverse magnetization of said nuclear spins at said edge region;
• radiating an RF excitation pulse that is adjusted to the SPAR pulse;
• and
• operate the MR data acquisition scanner in order to acquire MR data from said examination object after radiating said SPAR pulse, said saturation pulse and said RF excitation pulse, with the second frequency range adjusted to the first frequency range;
• and
• enter the acquired MR data into a memory and make the MR data in said memory accessible, via said computer, in electronic form as a data file.