Quantitation of intermolecular dipolar effects in NMR spectroscopy and high order MSE MR imaging

An analytical expression for intermolecular dipolar effects was derived for the CRAZED sequence with an arbitrary flip angle of the second RF pulse and time-varying gradients. A combination of the demagnetizing field theory and product operator formalism was utilized in the derivation. It is demonstrated that the time-averaged, not instantaneous, orientation of the applied gradients determines the contributions of long-range intermolecular dipole effects. An imaging sequence to detect intermolecular dipolar effects was designed. The second- and third-order multiple spin echo (MSE) NMR signals of swine muscle were observed and were found to be in good agreement with the theoretical predictions. MSE images of a water phantom with nth orders (n = 2, - 3, - 4, and - 5) were also obtained, and their relative signal intensities and optimized TE values were elucidated and compared with the theoretical prediction.