A method, magnetic resonance imaging computing device, and a non-transitory computer readable medium for producing a semi-adiabatic spectral-spatial spectroscopic imaging sequence for magnetic resonance imaging. A pulse control signal comprising a pair of adiabatic pulses and a linear phase pulse is generated. The pulse control signal is transformed into a pair of spectral-spatial refocusing pulses and an excitation pulse. The pair of spectral-spatial refocusing pulses and the excitation pulse are output to a waveform generator to produce the semi-adiabatic spectral-spatial spectroscopic imaging sequence.