CPM Seminar

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the most powerful and flexible diagnostic imaging method currently available to clinical medicine. A similar ability to non-invasively study materials, and changes in materials, with magnetic resonance has been sought for almost 30 years. In MRI one typically excites and detects the MR signal from hydrogen nuclei. In the human body the dominant MR signal arises from liquid water. The MR signal lifetime from liquid water is three to four orders of magnitude longer lived than the MR signal typically observed from materials. The consequence of this vast difference in time scale is that traditional MRI methods fail utterly when applied to the vast majority of materials.

This lecture will outline the basics of magnetic resonance imaging and describe the methodological developments which now permit relatively facile, artifact free, quantitative visualization of a very broad range of materials with MRI. These methodological developments will be illustrated through application to select problems in materials science spanning, porous media, polymer materials and food materials.

Monday, April 22nd 2002, 11:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Boardroom (room 104)