Methods for localization in NMR spectroscopy

Abstract

A method for acquiring an NMR spectroscopy response signal from a portion of a sample located in a voxel at the junction of three planar surfaces, each in a plane at an angle to the planes of the other two surfaces, first excites the sample with a localization subsequence which selects values for the surfaces in only two of the three dimensions, to evoke a chemical-shift spectrum from voxels substantially along a line at the junction of the two selected planes; and then provides a readout subsequence including a NMR signal portion spatially-selective in the third dimension and selected to limit the received spectroscopy response signal substantially to the voxel of interest. Any necessary cycling of sequences to improve spatial localization is provided in the two dimensions of the preliminary localization subsequence; phase cycling or alternation is not used in the selective RF pulse of the data acquisition subsequence. The methods provide improvements in immunity to localization artifacts, as may be produced physiological motion, or by NMR relaxation between the localization and read-out subsequences.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.