Ultra-Low Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

The authors are or have recently been members of the Los Alamos "SQUID Team" that pioneered a variety of Ultra-Low Field MRI applications including ULF MRI in conjunction with MEG (magnetoencephalography) for concurrent imaging of anatomy and function in the human brain, and ULF Relaxometry used to detect dangerous substances in security screenings.

Table of Contents ; Foreword by John Clarke ; Preface ; Acknowledgments ; Common Acronyms and Abbreviations ; Common Constants and Conversions ; 1. Fundamental Principles of NMR and MRI at ULF ; 1.1. Introduction ; 1.2. Characteristics of NMR Signal ; 1.3. Introducing Signal-to-Noise and Contrast-to-Noise ; 1.4. NMR and MRI at Ultra-Low Fields ; 1.5. MRI Effects ; 1.6. New Regimes of Physics Accesible at Ultra-Low Field ; 1.7. Summary of MRI and ULF ; 1.8. Summary of HF and ULF MRI Comparisons ; 2. Nuts and Bolts of ULF MRI ; 2.1. Introduction ; 2.2. General Concepts of Pre-Polarization Field Generation ; 2.3. Generation of Measurement Field, Gradients, and Spin-flip ; 2.4. Sensing the ULF-MR Signals ; 2.5. Magnetic Shielding ; 3. Magnetic Resonance Phenomena at ULF ; 3.1. Interaction between the Electromagnetic Radiation and the Nuclear Spins at ULF ; 3.2. Quantum Mechanical Description of Interaction between the Electromagnetic Radiation and the Nuclear Spins ; 3.3. Theory of Relaxometry (Focused on Magnetic Field Dependence) ; 4. Imaging Techniques at ULF ; 4.1. Introduction ; 4.2. General Imaging Concepts (How to do MRI) ; 4.3. ULF MRI ; 4.4. Imaging Techniques: Making the Most of What You Got ; 4.5. On the Plus Side ; 4.6. Conclusions ; 5. Applications in ULF MRI ; 5.1. Multi-modal imaging of human brain anatomy and function: MEG and ULF MRI ; 5.2. New approaches to image human brain function uniquely enabled by ULF MRI ; 5.3. MagViz and ULF NMR relaxometers ; 5.4. A Final Word ; Disclosures ; Index