title: Flow in porous metallic materials: a magnetic resonance imaging study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To visualize flow dynamics of analytes inside porous metallic materials with laser-detected magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
  
  
  METHODS
  We examine the flow of nuclear-polarized water in a porous stainless steel cylinder. Laser-detected MRI utilizes a sensitive optical atomic magnetometer as the detector. Imaging was performed in a remote-detection mode: the encoding was conducted in the Earth's magnetic field, and detection is conducted downstream of the encoding location. Conventional MRI (7T) was also performed for comparison.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Laser-detected MRI clearly showed MR images of water flowing through the sample, whereas conventional MRI provided no image.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We demonstrated the viability of laser-detected MRI at low-field for studying porous metallic materials, extending MRI techniques to a new group of systems that is normally not accessible to conventional MRI.
authors.affiliation: Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Shoujun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Elad
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Harel
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Michalak
authors.forename: Charles W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Crawford
authors.forename: Dmitry
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Budker
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pines
mesh_terms: D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008422:Materials Testing / Q000379:methods*; D008670:Metals / Q000737:chemistry*; D016062:Porosity; D012212:Rheology / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D008670:Metals