FIG. 1.

A: Pulse sequence diagram of SMS DSC MRI acquisition: Both gradient and spin echo are acquired within one TR. B–E: Blipped CAIPI SMS Acquisition: several slices are excited simultaneously (B) and read out using a 2D EPI scan. Disentangling the overlapping slices (C) results in low SNR. An additional gradient blip scheme in slice direction (D) with each phase encoding step shifts the slices in PE direction and enables SMS imaging with much reduced g-factor penalty and thereby allowing it to be used in this work to replace standard non-slice accelerated acquisition with a very small SNR penalty. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]