Discrete analysis of stochastic NMR.II

Abstract

Stochastic NMR is an efficient technique for high-field in vivo imaging and spectroscopic studies where the peak RF power required may be prohibitively high for conventional pulsed NMR techniques. A stochastic NMR experiment excites the spin system with a sequence of RF pulses where the flip angles or the phases of the pulses are samples of a discrete stochastic process. In a previous paper the stochastic experiment was analyzed and analytic expressions for the input-output cross-correlations, average signal power, and signal spectral density were obtained for a general stochastic RF excitation. In this paper specific cases of excitation with random phase, fixed flip angle, and excitation with two random components in quadrature are analyzed. The input-output cross-correlation for these two types of excitations is shown to be Lorentzian. Line broadening is the only spectral distortion as the RF excitation power is increased. The systematic noise power is inversely proportional to the number of data points N used in the spectral reconstruction. The use of a complete maximum length sequence (MLS) may improve the signal-to-systematic-noise ratio by 20 dB relative to random binary excitation, but peculiar features in the higher-order autocorrelations of MLS cause noise-like distortion in the reconstructed spectra when the excitation power is high. The amount of noise-like distortion depends on the choice of the MLS generator.