Magnetization transfer and T2 relaxation components in tissue.

T2 relaxation makes an important contribution to tissue contrast in magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Many tissues are known to exhibit multicomponent T2 relaxation that suggests some compartmental segregation of mobile protons on a T2 timescale. Magnetization transfer (MT) is another relaxation mechanism that can be used to produce tissue contrast in MR imaging. The MT process depends strongly on water-macromolecular interactions. To investigate the relationship between multicomponent T2 relaxation and the MT process, multiecho T2 measurements have been combined with MT measurements for freshly excised samples of cardiac muscle, striated muscle, and white matter. For muscle, short T2 components show greater MT than long T2 components, consistent with the belief that they represent distinct water environments. For white matter, quantitative MT measurements were identical for the two major T2 components, apparently because of exchange between the T2 compartments on a time-scale characteristic of the MT experiment. Implications for accurate modeling of MT in tissue and the use of MT for MR image contrast are discussed.