Systems and methods for acquiring three-dimensional imaging data from a breast of a subject includes acquiring, with a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system, NMR data from a volume of interest (VOI) including a breast by acquiring data in a series of variable sequence blocks. A sequence block includes one or more excitation phases, one or more readout phases, and one or more waiting phases, to cause one or more resonant species in the breast to simultaneously produce individual NMR signals. Also, at least one member of the series of variable sequence blocks differs from at least one other member of the series of variable sequence blocks in at least N sequence block parameters, N being an integer greater than one. The method also includes comparing the NMR data to a dictionary of signal evolutions from breast tissue and generating a report indicating quantitative tissue parameters over the breast.
