My imaging research focuses on development of methodology that will produce unique contrast, higher spatial resolution and molecule specificity for differentiating malignant and benign tissues. I am also developing spectrally edited spectroscopic imaging sequences for clinical applications and exotic imaging techniques using intramolecular MQC’s, intermolecular MQC’s and longitudinal multispin orders.

Contrast in regular MR Imaging can be produced by a variety of methods that exploit the water molecules having different transverse relaxation times T2, longitudinal relaxation times T1, and motional characteristics at different regions of the tissue and also by variation in local susceptibility. These conventional methods are largely based on tissue-induced alterations of the above mentioned MR characteristics. Alternatively, the contrast generated by methods involving intermolecular and intramolecular multiple quantum coherences is totally different from that of regular imaging methods.

Intramolecular multiple quantum coherences can be created in molecules that exhibit scalar, dipolar or quadrupolar couplings. These multiple quantum coherences can be employed to produce multiple quantum T2 contrast and multiple quantum diffusion contrast with molecule specificity. Further n quantum coherence is n times sensitive to gradients, offsets and phase shifts. These properties of multiple quantum coherences can be employed to produce images with superior resolution.

Intermolecular multiple quantum coherences (i-MQC’s) can be generated by the dipolar field caused by distant spins separated by the correlation distance. The creation of i-MQC’s does not demand the presence of intramolecular spin couplings and hence can be created in wide range of biological tissues. The ability to manipulate image contrast by changing the pitch length and thus altering the interaction distance between the spins makes this technique of interest to clinical imaging. These techniques will be used to investigate tumor vasculature and other disorders.