Zero-Field Imaging Techniques

Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) is a magnetic resonance technique closely related to NMR that is commonly used to characterize crystalline solids. Spatially-resolved NQR is of particular interest for studying the position, structure, and function of such solid samples. This chapter discusses a “single-shot” method for accelerating spatially-resolved NQR measurements (thus enabling the rapid generation of NQR images). The method utilizes the fact that certain NQR relaxation rates are field-dependent, which in turn allows measured relaxation time distributions measured in a static field gradient to be converted into spatial distributions.