Magnetic resonance imaging with an optical atomic magnetometer

We report an approach for the detection of magnetic resonance imaging without superconducting magnets and cryogenics: optical atomic magnetometry. This technique possesses a high sensitivity independent of the strength of the static magnetic field, extending the applicability of magnetic resonance imaging to low magnetic fields and eliminating imaging artifacts associated with high fields. By coupling with a remote-detection scheme, thereby improving the filling factor of the sample, we obtained time-resolved flow images of water with a temporal resolution of 0.1 s and spatial resolutions of 1.6 mm perpendicular to the flow and 4.5 mm along the flow. Potentially inexpensive, compact, and mobile, our technique provides a viable alternative for MRI detection with substantially enhanced sensitivity and time resolution for various situations where traditional MRI is not optimal.

[1]  C. cohen-tannoudji,et al.  DETECTINON OF THE STATIC MAGNETIC FIELD PRODUCED BY THE ORIENTED NUCLEI OF OPTICALLY PUMPED $sup 3$He GAS. , 1969 .

[2]  Bernhard Blümich,et al.  NMR Imaging of Materials , 2000 .

[3]  H. Pfeifer.  Principles of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Microscopy , 1992 .

[4]  H. Meyer,et al.  Low-drift broadband directly coupled dc SQUID read-out electronics , 2002 .

[5]  T. W. Kornack,et al.  A subfemtotesla multichannel atomic magnetometer , 2003, Nature.

[6]  W. Gawlik,et al.  Resonant nonlinear magneto-optical effects in atoms , 2002, physics/0203077.

[7]  D Budker,et al.  Hyperpolarized xenon nuclear spins detected by optical atomic magnetometry. , 2004, Physical review letters.

[8]  A. Pines,et al.  Time-of-flight flow imaging using NMR remote detection. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[9]  M. Romalis,et al.  Tunable atomic magnetometer for detection of radio-frequency magnetic fields. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[10]  Laser-polarized {sup 129}Xe NMR and MRI at ultra-low magnetic fields , 2002 .

[11]  M. Romalis,et al.  NMR detection with an atomic magnetometer. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[12]  Robert McDermott,et al.  Liquid-State NMR and Scalar Couplings in Microtesla Magnetic Fields , 2002, Science.

[13]  A. Pines,et al.  Remotely detected high-field MRI of porous samples. , 2004, Journal of magnetic resonance.

[14]  Sunil Saxena,et al.  Amplification of xenon NMR and MRI by remote detection , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[15]  Christian Hilty,et al.  Microfluidic gas-flow profiling using remote-detection NMR. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[16]  John Clarke,et al.  SQUID‐detected MRI at 132 μT with T1‐weighted contrast established at 10 μT–300 mT , 2005 .