Special Seminar: Gary Green

September 8, 2010

McGovern InstituteGary Green, director of the York Neuroimaging Center, will deliver a talk on “Recent advances in increasing the sensitivity of NMR and MRI by four orders of magnitude”.  The use of parahydrogen for spin transfer to nuclei in other molecules without changing that target molecule’s structure will be described. In particular, the seminar will go into the details of how these recent advances in manipulating the spin-state of nuclei can be used to create extremely large magnetisations, in low field, that can be easily detected using both existing MRI coils, SQUIDS and other devices. This new methodology allows the potential non-invasive observation of biochemistry as well as the acquisition of high resolution information. The four orders of magnitude increase in sensitivity also allows the design of new hardware for MRI which can optimally operate in low fields. The implications for the future of imaging will be discussed.