Fig. 1.

(a) RF and gradient waveforms of a bi-polar mode echo-planar 2DRF pulse. Amplitudes for RF subpulses are modulated by a SINC- Hamming envelope. Note that at the zero crossings of the modulation envelope, the sub-pulses are skipped and the blip gradient area is doubled. (b) Simulated excitation profiles by the 2DRF pulse as shown in (a). The 2DRF pulse provides independent control of excitation thickness along Y and Z directions. The FOE is determined by the G_y blip gradient area. Due to the discrete sampling of excitation k-space in the k_y direction, replicates of the excitation pattern occur periodically along the PE direction.