A versatile high speed 250-mHz pulse imager for biomedical applications

Abstract

A versatile 250-MHz pulse electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) instrument for imaging of small animals is presented. Flexible design of the imager hardware and software makes it possible to use virtually any pulse EPR imaging modality. A fast pulse generation and data acquisition system based on general purpose PCI boards performs measurements with minimal additional delays. Careful design of receiver protection circuitry allowed us to achieve very high sensitivity of the instrument. In this article, we demonstrate the ability of the instrument to obtain three-dimensional (3D) images using the electron spin echo (ESE) and single-point imaging (SPI) methods. In a phantom that contains a 1 mM solution of narrow line (16 μT, peak-to-peak) paramagnetic spin probe, we achieved an acquisition time of 32 s per image with a fast 3D ESE imaging protocol. Using an 18-min 3D phase relaxation (T2e) ESE imaging protocol in a homogeneous sample, a spatial resolution of 1.4 mm and a standard deviation of T2e of 8.5% were achieved. When applied to in vivo imaging this precision of T2e determination would be equivalent to 2 Torr resolution of oxygen partial pressure in animal tissues. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.