"In a way we've developed this molecular window that
"Getting a sense of which molecules are in a tissue sample is important if you want to know if it's cancerous, or if you want to know if certain environmental contaminants are harming cells inside the body."
Until now traditional NMR techniques haven't been able provide high-resolution profiles of living organisms because of magnetic distortions from the sample itself. The analogy Simpson gives is that it's like being in a helicopter over a stadium while trying to talk to people at a concert down below. It's incredibly difficult to communicate because of the noise distortion, but if you give both a walkie-talkie, it makes communication much easier.
Simpson and his team were able to overcome the magnetic distortion problem by creating tiny communication channels based on something called long-range dipole interactions between molecules. In other words, whereas before only a snapshot of an object can be given this new technique can offer a complete chemical make-up of molecules within the object.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-nmr-technique-molecular-window.html#jCp
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