Development of a Polarizer and Biocompatible Polarizing Agents for Use in Dynamic Nuclear Polarization DNP-Enhanced NMR and MRI

The application of 13C (or other low γ nuclei) NMR spectroscopy and imaging for clinical diagnosis has been constrained by the extremely long imaging and spectroscopy acquisition times that are required to obtain high SNR under physiological conditions (low natural abundance of 13C, low concentration of 13C-compounds, physiological temperature etc.). However, this obstacle could be overcome by in vitro hyperpolarization of a 13C-containing molecule with long spin lattice relaxation time via dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) and subsequent injection into the animal or patient of investigation [1, 2]. DNP is achieved by resonant excitation of electron spins of radicals (electron paramagnetic…