Introduction to Ultra-Low Field (ULF) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Applications

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Introduction to Ultra-Low Field (ULF) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Applications Robert Kraus, Jr.1* 1 Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) was initially and independently described by Purcell and Bloch in 1946. In 1973, Lauterbur is credited with describing how a NMR image could be generated by adding magnetic field gradients to spatially encode the NMR signal. This led to the now ubiquitous medical MRI used throughout the world. Typical MRI requires extremely high magnetic fields, typically near 1 Tesla (10,000 Gauss) or more. MRI at extremely high fields (3T or more) provide exquisite spatial resolution. NMR at extremely low magnetic fields was speculated to have promise by Borodin in 1967 and later by Bene in 1980 and Bergmann in 1981. Seton reported the first SQUID-based NMR at low field in 1992 for room temperature samples at 10mT. Seton subsequently demonstrated low-field (LF) MRI at 10mT in 1997. McDermott, et al. reported the first "ultra-low" field NMR at measurement fields of a few microtesla in 2002 and MRI at measurement fields of ~100 microtesla. This early work led to several groups around the world to pursue both NMR and MRI applications at ULF. Not only does ULF avoid many problems encountered at high field (RF heating, field distortions, forces on ferromagnetic materials to name only a few), but it provides new information such as field-dependent relaxation times, extraordinary sensitivity to spin-spin coupling, among others. These differences are being exploited into a variety of applications from medicine to material detection to basic physics. This talk will review some of the applications being currently pursued in ULF-MRI and speculate about other possible applications this new technique may provide in the future. Conference: Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism , Dubrovnik, Croatia, 28 Mar - 1 Apr, 2010. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Instrumentation and Multi-modal Integrations: MEG, Low-field MRI,EEG, fMRI,TMS,NIRS Citation: Kraus, Jr. R (2010). Introduction to Ultra-Low Field (ULF) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Applications. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.06.00006 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 18 Mar 2010; Published Online: 18 Mar 2010. * Correspondence: Robert Kraus, Jr., Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, United States, rkraus@lanl.gov Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Robert Kraus, Jr. Google Robert Kraus, Jr. Google Scholar Robert Kraus, Jr. PubMed Robert Kraus, Jr. Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.