FID-SPI pulse sequence for quantitative MRI of fluids in porous media

MRI has great potential for providing quantitative, spatially resolved information about fluids imbibed in porous media. The pure phase encode SPRITE technique has proven to be a very general method for the generation of density images in porous media; however, low flip-angle RF pulses and broad filter widths, required by short encoding times, yield sub-optimal S/N images. A 1-D phase-encoding sequence for T2(∗) mapping, named FID-SPI, is presented and analyzed in terms of image quality and accuracy of fluid content distribution in porous media. Extension to 2-D and 3-D imaging was straightforward and images of heterogeneous samples are presented. The FID-SPI measurement results in a series of individual T2(∗) weighted images acquired following RF excitation and pulsed phase-encoding gradients. Key to the performance of the FID-SPI method is high quality control of the magnetic field gradient pulse to ensure each FID point has identical spatial encoding. FID-SPI is intended for a quantitative determination of the spatially resolved fluid content in heterogeneous porous media, having the ability to determine the T2(∗) decay for each image pixel. T2(∗) mapping aids in estimation of the local fluid content.