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The Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technique was proposed in the early 1970s and soon after found clinical applications to observe in vivo soft tissues containing water molecules. Introduction of MRI was possible due to much earlier work on nuclear magnetic resonance phenomena. Although contrasting in standard – proton-based MRI is different from hyperpolarized noble gas MRI – the same physical principles apply to both techniques. Currently the number of clinical applications of hyperpolarized noble gases MRI is steadily increasing. Image quality, unlike in standard MRI, depends, however, on efficient gas polarization produced by dedicated gas polarizers. The first MR images of mouse lungs using hyperpolarized 129Xe gas were demonstrated by Albert et al. in 1994.1  The first MR images of the human lungs filled with polarized 3He were reported in 1996.2–4 

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