The characterisation of mammalian tissue with 2D relaxation methods

The potential of two-dimensional (2D) relaxometry for characterising mammalian tissue is explored on samples of liver, kidney (cortex, medulla and ureter) as well as cartilage. Significant differences are found between the T1-T2 spectra of healthy and diseased human cartilage which suggests that 2D relaxometry could have potential use in clinical diagnosis. The effect of reducing the recovery delay on the T1-T2 spectrum is explored to try to identify the optimum balance between speed and accuracy.