A versatile magnetic field gradient control system for NMR imaging

A device which generates and electronically manipulates the static and time-dependent magnetic field gradients necessary in NMR imaging experiments employing the projection reconstruction (zeugmatography), the sensitive line, and the sensitive point techniques is described. Selection of the imaging technique, the number of projections, and the image array size is provided by panel switches which also enable any projection, sensitive line or sensitive point to be arbitrarily chosen and examined. The device will function either independent of a conventional NMR Fourier transform spectrometer system when manual gradient scanning is employed, or synchronously with the spectrometer when gradients are scanned automatically. A gradient coil design and criteria for establishing the gradient amplitudes are discussed, and some NMR images which were generated with the system presented.