Biomedical NMR Spectroscopy and Imaging

Abstract

An application ofNMRspectroscopy for biomedical area is most clearly embodied as MRI, a diagnostic imaging tool, where the information obtained byNMRis presented in a visualized image. Signal intensity, more often, T1 and T2,ofH2O signal in 1HNMRis utilized for the construc- tion of image in 2-dimensional space, as the so-called slice.To acquire data along the direction of chemical shift, it requires further elaborated time in addition to the mea- surement of MRI data. This is the major reason why the MRspectroscopic imaging is not widely accepted in clin- ical situation. Furthermore, MR images are sometimes obscured with overlapping images generated by separated signals, so-called “chemical shift artifact.” In order to cir- cumvent this bias, it is necessary to employ a technique to enhance the sensitivity of the detection of NMR signal and also to shorten the measurement time by a fast scan technique in MRI. In this section a unique, however, an important area of NMRapplication, which will lead to the future NMRtechnology, the so called, molecular imaging (MI) in the near future is discussed. Tracking