A measure of the non-spherical distribution of electrical charge possessed by nuclei with a nuclear spin number greater than 1/2. The resulting interaction with electric field gradients in the molecule can lead to a shortening of relaxation times and a broadening of spectral lines.
The relaxation effect is the transition of an atom or molecule from a higher energy level to a lower one. The return of the excited proton from the high energy to the low energy level is associated with the loss of energy to the surrounding tissue. The T1 and T2 relaxation times define the way that the protons return to their resting levels after the initial radio frequency (RF) pulse. The T1 and T2 relaxation rates have an effect of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of MR images.
The relaxation process is a result of both T1 and T2, and can be controlled by the dependency of one of the two biological parameters T1 and T2 in the recorded signal. A T1 weightedspin echo sequence is based on a short repetition time (TR) and a change of it will affect the acquisition time and the T1 weighting of the image. Increased TR results in improved SNR caused by longer recovering time for the longitudinal magnetization. Increased TE improves the T2 weighting, combined with a long TR (of several T1 times) to minimize the T1 effect.
Nuclei can retain their magnetic orientation through a chemical reaction. Thus, if RF radiation is supplied to the spins at a frequency corresponding to the chemical shift of the nuclei in one chemical state so as to produce saturation or inversion, and chemical reactions transform the nuclei into another chemical state with a different chemical shift in a time short compared to the relaxation time, the NMRspectrum may show the effects of the saturation or inversion on the corresponding, unirradiated line in the spectrum. This technique can be used to study reaction kinetics of suitable molecules.
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