Three-dimensional microscopy toward in Vivo cellular imaging using NMR tomography

Recent advances in NMR microscopy are discussed on the basis of the fundamental physical parameters and experimental parameters obtained recently. We consider the fundamental resolution limit due to molecular diffusion and experimental bandwidth and the practical resolution limit arising from signal-to-noise ratio and line-broadening factor. Several microscope imaging pulse sequences are presented and applied to elucidate cellular imaging such as the cell lineage patterns in Xenopus laevis embryos. Both basic resolution studies and some applications of the NMR microscopy to the cellular imaging are discussed. Experimental results obtained with a 7.0-T NMR microscopy system developed at the University of California, Irvine, are presented.