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Docket #: S02-087

MRI - Efficient MR Fat Suppression in the Steady State

A method of generating MRI signals with fat suppressed steady state free precession (SSFP) contrast without requiring any additional scan time over standard SSFP procedures and with comparable signal to noise ratio (SNR) to other techniques. Oscillating steady state free precession is employed to achieve the fat suppressed MRI signals. In the oscillating steady state sequence, a pattern of tips and precession is repeated every N.sub.tips repetition time in order to produce useful contrasts. In a described embodiment, a specific oscillating sequence has four tips in a repetition interval with four steady states being produced. With equal precession in each repetition time, the sequence of complex tips can be determined by an inverse Shinnar-LeRoux (SLR) transform.