Method of extracting information about a sample by nuclear magnetic resonance measurements

A method of extracting information about a sample, the method comprising:

• performing a plurality of magnetic resonance measurements on the sample, each measurement including subjecting the sample to an encoding sequence, at least a part of the sequence being adapted to encode a magnetic resonance signal attenuation due to nuclear relaxation and diffusion,
• wherein at least one parameter of a gradient pulse sequence is varied between at least a first subset of said plurality of measurements, and at least one measurement of said first subset includes a gradient pulse sequence comprising a diffusion-encoding tensor representation with more than one non-zero eigenvalue,
• and wherein at least a second subset of said plurality of measurements include encoding for different levels of magnetic resonance signal attenuation due to nuclear relaxation;
• and
• extracting information about the sample from signals resulting from said plurality of magnetic resonance measurements, the information including nuclear relaxation and diffusion characteristics for the sample,
• wherein extracting the information includes estimating a representation of a probability distribution indicating a probability to find a particular combination of nuclear relaxation characteristics and diffusion characteristics in the sample, the combination including:
• a longitudinal and/or a transverse relaxation rate, and one or more of:
• an isotropic diffusion, an anisotropic diffusion, and an orientation of a diffusion tensor,
• wherein the probability distribution is estimated by determining a solution to an equation relating echo signals resulting from said plurality of measurements to a product of a kernel and the probability distribution, wherein components of the kernel are based on an acquisition parameter and a diffusion or a relaxation characteristic.