FIGURE 6.

MR acquisitions of plant petioles with the dual ring probe and with the solenoid coil. Images were selected from the same acquisition for the two samples imaged with the dual probe. Two petioles from two different plants were used as samples 1 and 2. Sample 1 was imaged with (a) the solenoid coil and (b) the dual probe (in DR1) using identical acquisition parameters. In selected slices of these acquisitions (based on the similarity of the imaged part of the petiole), the histogram profiles (fitted by a kernel distribution) of the pixel values were plotted for each probe, divided by their respective noise level (c). This provides the distribution of SNR values pixel by pixel in the selected slices. The highest SNR value reached with the proposed dual ceramic probe is 1.21 times higher than that of the solenoid coil. (d) Sample 2 was imaged with the dual probe (in DR2) during the same acquisition time slot as sample 1. In (a), (b) and (d), the selected images are represented with a linear scale from 0 to 1 since they are normalized with respect with their respective maximum values. In (c), the compared slices are represented with the same, indicated linear scale