preferred however because the slice profile is less than ideally rectangular a more rectangular slice profile is preferred although a perfectly rectangular slice profile is very difficult to achieve a method is presented in which bessel functions can be used in the design of rf pulses that offer improved slice profiles compared to those of the widely used sine cosine and gaussian functions the rf pulses constructed from bessel functions improve the image slice profile without reducing snr and without increasing rf or gradient peak amplitudes the pulses also allow thinner slice thicknesses and allow more contiguous slices which reduces the inefficiencies of either gaps or overlaps between adjacent image slices the bessel function of the first kind of order n for integer values of n u2267 0 is j n u2061 t t n u2062 u2211 m 0 u221d u2062 1 m u2062 t 2 u2062 m 2 2 u2062 m n u2062 m u2062 n m 4 where t is time and m is an integer for n 0 the bessel function of the first kind of order zero is j o u2061 t u2211 m 0 u221d u2062 1 m u2062 t 2 u2062 m 2 2 u2062 m u2062 m u2062 m 5 j o u2061 t 1 t 2 2 2 t 4 2 4 u2062 2 2 t 6 2 6 u2062 3 2 t 8 2 8 u2062 4 2 t 10 2 10 u2062 5 2 t 12 2 12 u2062 6 2 t 14 2 14 u2062 7 2 t 16 2 16 u2062 8 2 t 18 2 18 u2062 9 2 6 the oscillatory character of this function is shown.