A form of a spin echo produced by three pulse RF sequences, consisting of two RF pulses following an initial exciting RF pulse. The stimulated echo appears at a time delay after the third pulse equal to the interval between the first two pulses. Although classically produced with 90° pulses, any RF pulses other than an ideal 180° can produce a stimulated echo. The intensity of the echo depends in part on the T1 relaxation time because the excitation is 'stored' as longitudinal magnetization between the second and third RF pulses. For example, use of stimulated echoes with spatially selective excitation with orthogonal magnetic field gradients permits volume-selective excitation for spectroscopic localization.

Artifacts may appear as a series of fine lines. A narrow bandwidth causes a wide read window, which allows the stimulated echo to be incorporated into the image data. This can be supported by increasing the received bandwidth, which would narrow the read window, thus not incorporating the extraneous echo. Another help would be to change the first echo time, which may change the spacing of the stimulated echoes to outside that of the read window for the second echo.

(STEAM) A single volume spectroscopy method. The stimulated echo acquisition mode techniques is similar to Point Resolved Spectroscopy (PRESS). The STEAM sequence use a 90°-90°-90° pulse sequence instead of 90°-180°-180° pulses.

(VEST) The 'Volume Excitation Stimulated Echoes' sequence is a method similar to point resolved spectroscopy with stimulated echoes and volume selective excitation.

(DENSE) Displacement Encoding with Stimulated Echoes is a functional cardiac MRI pulse sequence, used to create maps of myocardial displacement with high resolution.
The DENSE magnitude images produce black blood images to show better myocard-blood contrast and to reduce motion artifacts.

See also Myocardial Late Enhancement, Spin Tagging, Coronary Angiography with D-Tagging, Cardiovascular Imaging, and Black Blood MRA.

Many MR imaging techniques using Motion Probing Gradients (MPG's) such as Spin Echo (SE), Stimulated Echo (STE), Rapid Acquisition with Relaxation Enhancement (RARE), Turbo-SE, and SE-EPI (Echo Planar Imaging for Spin echo acquisition), Spiral imaging, and Projection reconstruction including PROPELLER are applicable to DWI. In diffusion weighted imaging, 2 MPG's are required. The MPG's are put symmetrically into both sides of a 180° or 90° RF pulse to change the direction of the magnetized spin in the X-Y plane for spin echo or stimulated echo acquisition.