Unlike spin-echo sequence, a gradient echo sequence does not use a 180 degrees RF pulse to make the spins of particles coherent. Instead, the gradient echo uses magnetic gradients to manipulate the spins, allowing the spins to dephase and rephase when required. After an excitation pulse (usually less than 90 degrees), the spins are dephased after a period of time (due to free induction decay) and also by applying a reversed magnetic gradient to decay the spins. No signal is produced because the spins are not coherent. When the spins are rephased via a magnetic gradient, they become coherent, and thus signal (or "echo") is generated to form images. Unlike spin echo, gradient echo does not need to wait for transverse magnetisation to decay completely before initiating another sequence, thus it requires very short repetition times (TR), and therefore to acquire images in a short time.
After echo is formed, some transverse magnetisations remains because of short TR. Manipulating gradients during this time will produce images with different contrast. There are three main methods of manipulating contrast at this stage, namely steady-state free-precession (SSFP) that does not spoil the remaining transverse magnetisation, but attempts to recover them in subsequent RF pulses (thus producing T2-weighted images); the sequence with spoiler gradient that averages the transverse magnetisations in subsequent RF pulses by rotating residual transverse magnetisation into longitudinal plane and longitudinal magnetisation into transverse planes (thus producing mixed T1 and T2-weighted images), and RF spoiler that vary the phases of RF pulse to eliminates the transverse magnetisation, thus producing pure T1-weighted images.
Gradient echo uses a flip angle smaller than 90 degrees, thus longitudinal magnetisation is not eliminated while flipping the spins. The larger the flip angle, the higher the T1 weighing of the tissue because more longitudinal magnetisation most recover to produce a difference in signals between the tissues.