Abstract
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been successfully utilized to examine or to measure various internal physical and chemical parameters including chemical components, internal disorders, and internal structure in agricultural products. MRI techniques can be applied to the most agricultural products in a noninvasive nondestructive way. Additionally, various factors related to the quality of agricultural products can be measured at the same time from the target sample. In this study, fresh fruits such as mature and immature figs, persimmon, grape, mango, and dragon fruit were investigated using an industrial grade 1 T MRI system to estimate their magnetic resonance parameters and to characterize their physical states. Multi-slice multi- echo pulse sequences were used to investigate region of interest (ROI) in samples. Magnetic resonance parameters from a series of magnetic resonance images with different echo times (TEs) at different locations of the sample were acquired. Magnetic resonance parameters estimated mono-exponential and bi-exponential curve fitting were closely related to the physical states of fruit samples. This method suggests a useful way to contrast region of interest (ROI) in a simple way when we are using MRI as an investigating tool.
