ABSTRACT
Magnetic resonance imaging has made immense strides over the last decade. Initially, it was applied to medicine where it has proved to give an extremely useful extra diagnostic method to radiographers and has now become in addition, a medical research tool of increasing usefulness. If these were its only uses, imaging might not be an appropriate subject for a book aimed at chemists but applications in biology and technology are now well established and a basic understanding at least of the subject is necessary in today’s world for the aspiring NMR spectroscopist. Note that the word ‘nuclear’ has been quietly dropped from the description of the technique. This is because the public has difficulty in understanding the difference between stable and unstable isotopes. It also avoids any confusion with Nuclear Medicine, which discipline does use unstable isotopes. We will describe briefly how images are obtained, remembering that there now exist a multitude of RF pulse/magnetic field gradient sequences designed to obtain various ends, and then look at a number of more chemically oriented applications. Biomedical NMR looks at the chemistry taking place in living matter and, apart from straightforward spectroscopy, may use imaging with spatially resolved spectra or simply place a coil on the surface of a sample near an organ of interest, and watch what happens when various constraints are imposed on the system.
