{"doi":"10.1002/mrm.70183","title":"Comprehensive <scp>4D</scp> Parallel Transmission Spatial‐Spectral Pulse Design for Slab‐Selective Uniform Water‐Selective Excitation: Demonstration in the Human Brain at 7 Tesla","abstract":"PURPOSE: To propose a new parallel transmission (pTx) spatial-spectral (SPSP) pulse design for achieving slab-selective uniform water-selective excitation without unwanted out-of-slab fat excitation when using bipolar slab-selective gradients to maintain a sharp slab profile. METHODS: Our new pTx SPSP pulses were designed by formulating the design problem comprehensively in the 4D space (1D spectral and 3D spatial domains) and by incorporating a SPINS-like 2D excitation k-space trajectory for within-slab flip-angle homogenization. Our new design was validated at 7 T using simulation, phantom and human experiments with the commercial Nova eight-channel transmit RF head coil. Its utility was demonstrated by comparing to traditional multi-spoke pTx SPSP pulses. RESULTS: In both simulation and experiments, our design outperformed traditional approaches, producing slab-selective uniform water-selective excitation with no out-of-slab fat excitation. Quantitatively, coefficient of variation measuring excitation non-uniformity reduced by up to ∼23%. CONCLUSION: Our proposed new design provides an effective solution for slab-selective uniform water-selective excitation, holding a promise to many applications including mesoscale BOLD fMRI and fat-free body imaging at ultrahigh field.","journal":"Magnetic Resonance in Medicine","year":2025,"id":581200,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9545,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1214703,"name":"Zhe Zhang","orcid":"0000-0001-8220-8443","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":383707,"name":"Wen Zhong","orcid":"0000-0002-2444-3047","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":236958,"name":"Hua Guo","orcid":"0000-0002-0482-1493","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":256599,"name":"Kâmil Uǧurbil","orcid":"0000-0002-8475-9334","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":256597,"name":"Xiaoping Wu","orcid":"0000-0001-6021-9088","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1262246,"name":"Xin Shao","orcid":"0000-0002-5986-2487","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":54,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:58:47.357782Z","pmid":"41236102","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}