Determination of proton magnetization transfer rate constants in heterogeneous biological systems.

Two procedures are currently in use for the determination of proton magnetization transfer rate constants between macromolecular tissue components and water. The first method assumes that there are only two spin baths (macromolecular plus solvent) and that during off-resonance irradiation complete saturation of the "immobile" proton spin bath occurs (S. H. Koenig, R. D. Brown, III, R. Ugolini, Magn. Reson. Med. 29, 311 (1993)). This approach neglects the possibility of incomplete saturation and polydispersity, and yields an apparent magnetization transfer rate constant, Kapp. The second approach utilizes a formalism which can account for polydispersity and incomplete saturation of the immobile spin bath (K. Kuwata, D. Brooks, H. Yang, T. Schleich, J. Magn. Reson., in press). In this work magnetization transfer rate constants derived by the use of both methods for two systems, ocular lens tissue and cross-linked bovine serum albumin (BSA) were compared. For both samples Kapp was dependent on B2 off-resonance irradiation frequency and power when the first method was used. The second method provided values of the magnetization transfer rate constant that were similar to the values obtained by the first method, as the limit of complete saturation was approached.