Application of Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance to Tumor Biology

Abstract

The application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to biomedical research is an excellent example of how a physical technique may be employed to examine old problems from a completely new viewpoint. Although NMR has been widely used by biochemists to elucidate molecular structures and reaction kinetics, the application of NMR to biomedical research has led to noninvasive techniques for metabolite identification and quantification, assessment of tissue bioenergetics in vivo, and for the evaluation of the spatial distribution of metabolites in tissues. New, high field strength, large bore NMR instruments have promoted laboratory and clinical studies to assess how disease and therapy alter the distributionof biologically relevant nuclides such as 1H, 13C, 23Na and 31P. Although the application of in vivo 23Na and 31P NMR has been limited to low depth in vivo spectroscopy and low resolution imaging, proton (1H) NMR has become widely used for investigations of tissue water and to produce detailed tomographic images which reflect the spatial distribution of tissue water and the distribution of proton relaxation.