Novel Diffusion-Diffraction Patterns in Double-PFG NMR Afford Accurate Microstructural Information in Size Distribution Phantoms

Noam Shemesh¹, Evren zarslan², Peter J. Basser², Yoram Cohen¹

Diffusion-diffraction minima, which convey important microstructural information, vanish from the signal decay in single-pulsed-field-gradient (s-PFG) experiments conducted on specimens characterized by size distributions. The double-PFG (d-PFG) methodology, an extension of s-PFG, was recently predicted to exhibit zero-crossings (analogous to s-PFG diffusion-diffraction minima) that would persist even when the specimen is characterized by a broad size-distribution. We therefore studied the signal decay in both s- and d-PFG in size-distribution phantoms consisting of water-filled microcapillaries of various sizes. We find that the diffusion-diffraction minima in s-PFG indeed vanish, while the zero-crossings in d-PFG indeed persist, allowing to extract important microstructural information.