The application range of unilateral NMR has experienced considerable expansion during the last years. The use of single-sided probes is not limited by the object size making NMR a truly non-invasive method suitable for near surface studies of arbitrarily large objects. Analysis of fluids, polymers, and porous media can be done in-situ by measuring relaxation times, self-diffusion coefficients, and multi-quantum effects.

To characterize heterogeneous specimens NMR imaging has been demonstrated to be of great assistance. Recently, 1D and 2D images have been obtained implementing a phase-encoding method on a single-sided sensor. During this project a new fast imaging method has been developed which, depending on the sample, reduces the experimental time by up to two orders of magnitude. The new method was implemented on an open magnet with a geometry optimized to obtain 3D images.