ABSTRACT: The purpose of this experiment was to measure the rate of decay of the hyperpolarized state of urea, which is proportional to T1, and to look at the influence of different radical concentrations on the T2 of different substances. Both have important implications in hyperpolarization enhanced MRI studies. Hyperpolarization is a way to enhance signal to get better images. We measured the decay of the hyperpolarized state by hyperpolarizing a solution and then running MRI scans as the state decayed. For the radical experiment, we made various samples and then measured T2 on a high-res NMR system. We found that T2 shortens with radical in succinate and acetone. For urea, we did not observe a conclusive change. We noted that the hyperpolarized state for urea has decay constant T1 8.03±.16 s.
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