Work

Flow in porous metallic materials: A magnetic resonance imaging study

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: PURPOSE: To visualize flow dynamics of analytes inside porous metallic materials with laser-detected magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MATERIALS AND METHODS: We examine the flow of nuclear-polarized water in a porous stainless steel cylinder. Laser-detected MRI utilizes a sensitive optical atomic magnetometer as the detector. Imaging was performed in a remote-detection mode: the encoding was conducted in the Earth's magnetic field, and detection is conducted downstream of the encoding location. Conventional MRI (7T) was also performed for comparison. RESULTS: Laser-detected MRI clearly showed MR images of water flowing through the sample, whereas conventional MRI provided no image. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated the viability of laser-detected MRI at low-field for studying porous metallic materials, extending MRI techniques to a new group of systems that is normally not accessible to conventional MRI.

Source: Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging

DOI: 10.1002/jmri.21532

Authors: Shoujun Xu, Elad Harel, David J. Michalak, Charles W. Crawford, Dmitry Budker, Alexander Pines

Institutions: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley

Language: English

Topic: Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research

Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, Office of Naval Research