Premium
A comparison of magnetic resonance imaging methods for fluid content imaging in porous media
Author(s) -
Muir Colleen E.,
Balcom Bruce J.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.483
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1097-458X
pISSN - 0749-1581
DOI - 10.1002/mrc.3947
Subject(s) - magnetic resonance imaging , fast spin echo , chemistry , nuclear magnetic resonance , spin echo , porous medium , content (measure theory) , image quality , attenuation , relaxation (psychology) , porosity , optics , image (mathematics) , physics , radiology , artificial intelligence , medicine , psychology , mathematical analysis , social psychology , mathematics , organic chemistry , computer science
Quantitative measurements are important for imaging fluid content in porous media. Conventional MRI methods suffer from contrast because of relaxation times in porous media, resulting in measurements of apparent fluid content, not the true fluid content. We compare four magnetic resonance imaging methods for fluid content imaging in several water‐saturated reservoir core plugs: frequency‐encoded spin echo, single point ramped imaging with T 1 enhancement, hybrid spin echo single point imaging (SE‐SPI), and T 2 mapping SE‐SPI. 1‐D profiles obtained with each method were compared in terms of image quality, image sensitivity, and quantification of water content. The image quality of short T 2 lifetime samples suffered from blurring in hybrid SE‐SPI images. Image sensitivity was the highest in the profiles obtained with frequency‐encoded spin echo. The quantification of frequency‐encoded spin echo, T 2 mapping SE‐SPI, and hybrid SE‐SPI suffered in core plugs with a significant population of short T 2 components because of T 2 attenuation. Overall, single point ramped imaging with T 1 enhancement was found to be the most general method for fluid content imaging. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.