Applications of NMR imaging

Foams and emulsions are other multiphase systems to which research on the application of NMR imaging is on-going. There are a great many practical uses of aqueous foams and emulsions in food, pharmaceuticals, and engineering. Understanding and particularly assigning specific functional roles to individual components in the foam has been severely... 

Applications of NMR imaging outside medicine are relatively rare [6, 7]. Potentially rather useful applications are in the elastomer industry. This section features some selected examples which illustrate the type of information obtainable by imaging of elastomers. 

In materials science applications of NMR imaging the geometry of the object can often be chosen at liberty. For example, cylindrical samples can be used for studies of porosity by diffusion and flow in rocks and catalyst pellets [Maj2], and investigations of deterioration in polymers and elastomers. Furthermore, many biological samples show radial or close... 

Proper choice of tR and tE for suitable Ti and T2 weights is an important factor for determining image contrast in medical imaging. Due to less restrictions in measurement time and the use of rf power, a much wider variety of contrast parameters can be accessed in material applications of NMR imaging (cf. Chapter 7). 

Applications of NMR imaging outside the medical field have been published in a variety of books and journals [8-13, 21, 86, 108-115]. A rather important subject for applications of NMR imaging is polymer science, as polymers are rich in protons, the most sensitive, stable NMR nucleus, and many polymer materials are often soft, so that the homonuclear dipole-dipole interaetion among protons is partially averaged by molecular motion. Thus, polymers are far more suitable to NMR imaging than for instance ceramic materials. 

Acknowledgments The author thanks M. Knorgen (Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle) for the fruitful cooperation on application of NMR imaging on smart hydrogels, and R. Reichelt (West-falische Universitat Munster) for the FESEM micrograph. 

The method of NMR imaging was introduced by Lauterbur [ 15] in 1973 under the name zeugmatography. In subsequent years the spectacular progress of its application to anatomical imaging in medicine has made popular the name NMR tomography or NMR spin mapping [16,18]. The application of NMR imaging is by far not restricted to biomedicine, of course. An informative survey of the actual developments may be found in Refs. 13 and 14. 

Non-traditional applications of NMR imaging to studies of chemical reactions including polymerization reactions and the Belousov-Zhabotinsky oscillating reaction are considered. Publications concerning applications of NMR imaging to studies of the temperature and electric current density distributions in various specimens are discussed. NMR studies of hyperpolarized gases and gases... 

Applications of NMRI to polymer science were reviewed with examples for imaging of rigid, soft and fluid matter [635]. Further information on the applications of NMR imaging is available in several reviews [632,671] and books [393,627]. 

Kormoroski RA (1993) Non medical applications of NMR imaging. Analytical Chemistry 65 1068A-1077A. 

McCarthy KL, Kauten RJ and Agemura CK (1992) Application of NMR imaging to the study of velocity profiles during extrusion processing. Trends in Food Science and Technology 3 215-219. 

Nonmedical applications of NMR imaging and spectroscopy include the study of interstitial or bound water in food products (as used to increase the return on delicatessen), oil in seeds, etc. There are parallel applications for abiological composite materials fluids in porous (e.g., oil-bearing) rocks, plasticized resins, or rubber, in which the skeletal protons can be imaged, as in fats. But the field is developing so fast it is not easy to predict the new directions of advance (particularly with the advent of new superconductors that will not need liquid helium temperatures). 

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