Nuclear magnetic relaxation studies of water in frozen biological tissues. Cross-relaxation effects between protein and bound water protons

Abstract

Water proton longitudinal relaxation has been investigated in frozen mouse tissues including tumors. The nonfreezable water which gives rise to a relatively sharp NMR signal at this temperature (263 K) is identified as water bound to macromolecules. Measurements have been carried out by the nonselective inversion-recovery method at 90 and 6 MHz. Partially selective inversion has been achieved at 90 MHz by the DANTE sequence. The experimental data are analyzed by means of Solomon-type equations. This analysis provides the cross-relaxation term from which the dipolar contribution to water relaxation rate, arising from interactions with macromolecular protons, is calculated. This contribution seems to be dominant. The number of water protons interacting with a given macromolecular proton is found to be of the order of 10. The data at both frequencies can be consistently interpreted in terms of water diffusion, with a characteristic time of about 10 -9 sec. These conclusions are valid for all the tissues investigated here, their relaxation parameters exhibiting only slight differences.