Myocardial tagging with B₁ insensitive adiabatic DANTE inversion sequences

A new technique, based on adiabatic delays alternating with nutations for tailored excitation (DANTE) inversion sequences, is presented for generating uniform contrast tags across the myocardial wall even in the presence of B₁ inhomogeneities. The utility of this pulse was demonstrated using a surface coil for both transmission and signal reception in phantom and animal heart tagging studies. The experimental data demonstrated uniform grid contrast over a sixfold variation of B₁ magnitude, sharp tagging profiles, and the ability to follow the cardiac wall motion through the deformation of the fine rectangular tagging grid at different phases throughout the cardiac cycle.