Unfolding coil localized errors from an imperfect slice profile using a structured autocalibration matrix: An application to reduce outflow effects in cine bSSFP imaging

Purpose Balanced steady‐state free precession (bSSFP) imaging is susceptible to outflow effects where excited spins leaving the slice as part of the blood stream are misprojected back onto the imaging plane. Previous work proposed using slice‐encoding steps to localize these outflow effects from corrupting the target slice, at the expense of prolonged scan time. This present study extends this idea by proposing a means of significantly reducing most of the outflowing signal from the imaged slice using a coil localization method that acquires a slice‐encoded calibration scan in addition to the 2D data, without being nearly as time‐demanding as our previous method. This coil localization method is titled UNfolding Coil Localized Errors from an imperfect slice profile using a Structured Autocalibration Matrix (UNCLE SAM). Methods Retrospective and prospective evaluations were carried out. Both featured a 2D acquisition and a separate slice‐encoded calibration of the center in‐plane k‐space lines across all desired slice‐encoding steps. Results Retrospective results featured a slice‐by‐slice comparison of the slice‐encoded images with UNCLE SAM. UNCLE SAM's subtraction from the slice‐encoded image was compared with a subtraction from the flow‐corrupted 2D image, to demonstrate UNCLE SAM's capability to unfold outflowing spins. UNCLE SAM's comparison with slice encoding showed that UNCLE SAM was able to unfold up to 74% of what slice encoding achieved. Prospective results showed significant reduction in outflow effects with only a marginal increase in scan time from the 2D acquisition. Conclusions We developed a method that effectively unfolds most outflowing spins from corrupting the target slice and does not require the explicit use of slice‐encoding gradients. This development offers a method to reduce most outflow effects from the target slice within a clinically feasible scan duration compared with the fully sampled slice‐encoding technique. We previously published a method that reduces outflowing spin corruption in a 2D bSSFP image by applying through‐slice phase‐encoding steps (slice encoding). This treated the 2D acquisition as a volumetric, slice‐distorted problem. The current work extends this by exploiting channel‐localized sensitivities of outflowing spins to help unfold them spatially from the target slice, titled UNfolding Coil Localized Errors from an imperfect slice profile using a Structured Autocalibration Matrix (UNCLE SAM). This was tested r