Characterization and compensation of f 0 inhomogeneity artifact in spiral hyperpolarized 13 C imaging of the human heart.

f 0 -map correction reduced blur and recovered signal from dropouts, particularly along the posterior myocardial wall. The low image SNR of [13 C]bicarbonate can be compensated with longer duration readouts but at the expense of increased f 0 artifacts, which can be partially corrected for with the proposed methods.