A system for non-invasive analysis of tissue includes a non-ferromagnetic handheld probe (15) distinguishing between nerves, muscles and blood vessels. A magnetic field source in the probe generates a uniform, time-invariant magnetic field within a volume of tissue and contains an inductive coil (19) that receives RF excitation signals in a specific frequency range related to the field strength thereby generating excitation signals perpendicular to a direction of the magnetic field and magnetizing a slice of the living tissue having depth and thickness predetermined by the field strength whereby only living tissue in each slice responds to nuclear spin echo signals. A control unit generates time patterns of the excitation signals and extracts data indicative of the nuclear spin echo signals from the living tissue, determines relaxation curves having time constants T1, T2 and performs statistical processing of the relaxation curves to determine the type of tissue excited by the probe.
