Simulations of NMR-detected diffusion in suspensions of red cells: the effects of variation in membrane permeability and observation time.

Abstract

Monte Carlo random-walk simulations of diffusion in virtual lattices of cells have been used to study and characterize diffusion-coherence phenomena that arise when pulsed field-gradient spin-echo (PGSE) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments are conducted on human red blood cell (RBC; erythrocytes) suspensions. These coherence effects are manifest as diffraction-like patterns when the normalized PGSE signal intensities are plotted as a function of the spatial wave vector q in so-called q-space plots. q-Space analysis is sensitive to small changes in cell morphology, cell size, membrane transport rates, hematocrit, and packing arrangement. In the present study we used simulations to predict the effect of varying the time over which diffusion is measured (the "observation time" or "diffusion time") and the permeability of the membrane on the form of q-space plots. Thus we predict that inhibiting water exchange across the human RBC membrane, such that the value of the permeability coefficient is reduced by approximately an order of magnitude below the normal physiological value, will effectively render the membrane impermeable on the timescale of the PGSE NMR experiment; further inhibition will therefore result in negligible reduction in the measured root-mean-square displacement (r.m.s.d.) of diffusing water as a function of the observation time. The work also underscores the importance of using an appropriate experimental observation time if q-space data are to be used to estimate compartment dimensions and interbarrier spacing, and illustrates an expeditious method for determining this value.