(a) 60 mm phantom containing the lower body of a rat. The background was filled with an animal hide gelatine (AHG) at 0.6 S m−1, (b) MR magnitude image and (c) its profile along the dotted line. A SE pulse sequence was used with TR/TE = 700/10 ms, I = 18 mA and Tc = 9 ms. Eight slices were imaged with 2 mm slice thickness, NEX was 16, FOV was 100 × 100 mm2, image matrix size was 128 × 128 and pixel size was 0.78 × 0.78 mm2.