Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 12: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: Frontiers and Applications (joint CPP, BP)
BP 12.3: Talk
Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 14:15–14:30, H48
Exploring the limits to spatially resolved NMR — Achim Gädke1,2 and •Nikolaus Nestle1,3 — 1TU Darmstadt, Institute of condensed matter physics, Germany — 2Present adress: Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand — 3Present adress: BASF SE, GKC/R, Ludwigshafen, Germany
Recent advances in MRI have demonstrated resolutions down to 1 μm. Magnetic resonance force microscopy has the potential to reach sensitivity for single nuclear spins. Given these numbers, in vivo imaging of single cells or even biomacromolecules may seem possible. However, for in vivo applications, there are fundamental differences in the contrast mechanisms compared to MRI at macroscopic scales as the length scale of of molecular self-diffusion exceeds that of the spatial resolution on the NMR time scale. Those effects - which are fundamentally different from the echo attenuation in field gradient NMR - even may lead to general limitations on the spatial resolution achievable in aqueous systems with high water content. In our contribution, we explore those effects on a model system in a high-resolution stray-field imaging setup. In addition to experimental results, simulations based on the Bloch-Torrey equation will be presented.