In a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method, in the form of an MRI pulse sequence, and an apparatus for acquiring MRI data from an object, a contrast preparation module is applied to the object for preparing a contrast in the magnetization of nuclear spins of the object, and an imaging module is applied to the object after the contrast preparation module for acquisition of magnetic resonance image data reflecting the prepared contrast. The contrast preparation module includes a train of radio-frequency pulses with the same flip angle magnitude .alpha., the respective signs of the flip angles alternating from radio-frequency pulse to radio-frequency pulse.