Flow in porous metallic materials: a magnetic resonance imaging study.
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.
Xu
Shoujun
S
Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Harel
Elad
E
Michalak
David J
DJ
Crawford
Charles W
CW
Budker
Dmitry
D
Pines
Alexander
A
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*
D008670:Metals