A comparison of magnetic resonance methods for spatially resolved T2 distribution measurements in porous media

Abstract

Naturally occurring porous media are usually characterized by a distribution of pore sizes. If the material is fluid saturated, the 1H magnetic resonance (MR) signal depends on the pore size, the surface relaxivity and the fluid itself. Measurement of the transverse relaxation time T2 is a well-established technique to characterize material samples by means of MR. T2 distribution measurements, including T2 distribution mapping, are widely employed in clinical applications and in petroleum engineering. T2 distribution measurements are the most basic measurement employed to determine the fluid-matrix properties in MR core analysis. Three methods for T2 distribution mapping, namely spin-echo single point imaging (SE-SPI), DANTE-Z Carr–Purcell–Meiboom–Gill (CPMG) and adiabatic inversion CPMG are compared in terms of spatial resolution, minimum observable T2 and sensitivity. Bulk CPMG measurement is considered to be the gold standard for T2 determination. Bulk measurement of uniform samples is compared to the three spatially resolved measurements. SE-SPI is an imaging method, which measures spatially resolved T2s in samples of interest. A variant is introduced in this work that employs pre-equalized magnetic field gradient waveforms and is therefore able to measure shorter T2s than previously reported. DANTE-Z CPMG and adiabatic inversion CPMG are faster, non-imaging, local T2 distribution measurements. The DANTE-Z pulse train and adiabatic inversion pulse are compared in terms of T1 or T2 relaxation time effects during the RF pulse application, minimum pulse duration, requisite RF pulse power, and inversion profile quality. In addition to experimental comparisons, simulation results are presented.