Sensitivity quantification of remote detection NMR and MRI

A sensitivity analysis is presented of the remote detection NMR technique, which facilitates the spatial separation of encoding and detection of spin magnetization. Three different cases are considered: remote detection of a transient signal that must be encoded point-by-point like a free induction decay, remote detection of an experiment where the transient dimension is reduced to one data point like phase encoding in an imaging experiment, and time-of-flight (TOF) flow visualization. For all cases, the sensitivity enhancement is proportional to the relative sensitivity between the remote detector and the circuit that is used for encoding. It is shown for the case of an encoded transient signal that the sensitivity does not scale unfavorably with the number of encoded points compared to direct detection. Remote enhancement scales as the square root of the ratio of corresponding relaxation times in the two detection environments. Thus, remote detection especially increases the sensitivity of imaging experiments of porous materials with large susceptibility gradients, which cause a rapid dephasing of transverse spin magnetization. Finally, TOF remote detection, in which the detection volume is smaller than the encoded fluid volume, allows partial images corresponding to different time intervals between encoding and detection to be recorded. These partial images, which contain information about the fluid displacement, can be recorded, in an ideal case, with the same sensitivity as the full image detected in a single step with a larger coil.