Derivation of quantitative information in NMR imaging: a phantom study

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Abstract
The use of NMR imaging as a quantitative research tool requires insight into the relationship between various imaging techniques and their resultant images. Work was undertaken to elucidate this relationship by using the following procedure. First, a theoretical model of NMR imaging under various pulse sequences was elaborated. Subsequently, a series of inversion recovery and saturation recovery images of a particular object slice was generated by varying the sequence parameters. Finally, pure rho , T1 and T2 images of that slice were obtained by solving the corresponding model equations. This procedure was applied to a test phantom containing tubes with suitable reference substances, including aqueous solutions of agar, manganese chloride and deuterium, and water-fat mixtures. Experiments were carried out with a prototype resistive NMR imager with a static magnetic field of 0.14 T, corresponding to a hydrogen proton resonance frequency of 5.9 MHz.