Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging of a single cell

Abstract

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging is now an established tool in clinical imaging and competes favourably with conventional X-ray computerized tomography (CT) scanning. The drive behind NMR imaging has primarily been in the area of whole-body imaging, which has been limited clinically to fields of up to 1.5 T (60 MHz). It is recognized that there may be substantial advantages in obtaining images with sub-millimetre spatial resolution. Also, there may be benefits to imaging at higher fields, since the signal increases as the square of the magnetic field. Using a modified 9.5 T 89-mm-bore high-resolution NMR spectrometer, we have now obtained the first NMR images of a single cell, demonstrating the advent of the NMR imaging microscope. The NMR microscope is expected to have considerable impact in the areas of biology, medicine and materials science, and may serve as a precursor to obtaining such resolutions on human subjects.