Magnetic Resonance Microscopy : Instrumentation and Applications in Engineering, Life Science, and Energy Research

This book is the fourth in the Wiley-VCH series on Magnetic Resonance Microscopy, a series linked in spirit to the International Conference on Magnetic Resonance Microscopy (ICMRM). Winfried Kuhn and Bernhard Blümich organized the first meeting of this biannual conference in 1991 in Heidelberg, which led to the first book in this series. That Heidelberg meeting is also when Paul Callaghan burst upon the scene (with his student Yang Xia, who remains active in these meetings) with his new, but now classic, book Principles of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Microscopy (Oxford University Press) – what timing! The wider appearance of magnetic gradient fields in the portfolio of magnetic resonance methods for imaging and studies of molecular transport phenomena was an exciting prospect. It motivated the still ongoing ICMRM conference series and the associated books, which summarize the progress in this field with chapters written by leading experts, among them Nobel Prize awardees Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield as well as Sir Paul Callaghan, who shaped that community like a force of nature from then on until his untimely death in 2012. Also, our brilliant colleague Robert Blinc from Slovenia attended the first ICMRM but had to leave early following an announcement during one of the sessions effectively saying “Professor Blinc, you are needed back in your country,” at which Robert Blinc stood up and left to facilitate the independence of Slovenia from Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. We were witnessing the birth of a country, a unique experience for most of us. At the third meeting in Würzburg, the brave suggestion to hold a meeting in North America was accepted. Thus, the fourth meeting was in Albuquerque and ICMRM has now a truly international presence, having ventured as far away as Utsunomiya and Beijing. These meetings, originally dubbed the Heidelberg Meetings, have been at the forefront of amazing developments and accompanying applications of magnetic... "Compared to medical Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Magnetic Resonance Microscopy (MRM) focuses on MRI applied to objects of smaller scale and higher spatial resolution since more than three decades. After the pioneering work by Eccles, Callaghan, Aguayo, Blackband, Johnson, et al. in 1986, MRM quickly spread to, among other fields, chemistry, histology and materials research. Since 1992, the edited book series "Magnetic Resonance Microscopy" has provided an important voice describing the latest developments of spatially resolved magnetic resonance methods and their applications far beyond the scope of medical diagnostics. An excellent introduction to MRM, focusing on the practical aspects of high magnetic fields and on the study of biological systems, was authored in 2017 by Luisa Ciobanu: "Microscopic Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Practical Perspective" (Pan Stanford, Singapore, 2017). Our book complements this recent monograph by showing the use of MRM and related techniques in a much broader area and on a wider scale, which extends from chemical engineering to plant research and battery applications, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of MRM. The book opens with a section on hardware and methodology, covering aspects of micro-engineering, magnet technology, coil performance and hyper-polarization to improve signal-to-noise-ratio, a major bottleneck of MRM. Specific pulse sequences and developments in the field of mobile nuclear magnetic resonance are further topics of this first chapter. The following parts, 2 and 3, review essential processes such as filtration, multi-phase flows and transport, and a wide range of systems from biomarkers via single cells to plants and biofilms. Part 4 focuses on energy research, which is becoming increasingly important due to the globally growing environmental problems. It reports on battery types and their developments and how battery states can be recorded and characterized with MRM. Finally, there is an appeal in the last chapter that theory and applications should not be treated separately, because much can be gained from their complementarity"-- Provided by publisher Magnetic Resonance Microscopy Explore the interdisciplinary applications of magnetic resonance microscopy in this one-of-a-kind resource In Magnetic Resonance Microscopy: Instrumentation and Applications in Engineering, Life Science and Energy Research, a team of distinguished researchers delivers a comprehensive exploration of the use of magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) and similar techniques in an interdisciplinary milieux. Opening with a section on hardware and methodology, the book moves on to consider developments in the field of mobile nuclear magnetic resonance. Essential processes, including filtration, multi-phase flow and transport, and a wide range of systems – from biomarkers via single cells to plants and biofilms – are discussed next. After a fulsome treatment of MRM in the field of energy research, the editors conclude the book with a chapter extoling the virtues of a holistic treatment of theory and application in MRM. Magnetic Resonance Microscopy: Instrumentation and Applications in Engineering, Life Science and Energy Research also includes: A thorough introduction to recent developments in magnetic resonance microscopy hardware and methods, including ceramic coils for MR microscopy Comprehensive explorations of applications in chemical engineering, including ultra-fast MR techniques to image multi-phase flow in pipes and reactors Practical discussions of applications in the life sciences, including MRI of single cells labelled with super paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles In-depth examinations of new applications in energy research, including spectroscopic imaging of devices for electrochemical storage Perfect for practicing scientists from all fields, Magnetic Resonance Microscopy: Instrumentation and Applications in Engineering, Life Science and Energy Research is an ideal resource for anyone seeking a one-stop guide to magnetic resonance microscopy for engineers, life scientists, and energy researchers.