In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), selected magnetic dipoles in a subject are aligned with a main magnetic field for later manipulation, and signals received after such manipulations are used to create image representations of the subject. One drawback is that even powerful magnetic fields can only align a very small percentage of dipoles in the region of the field. Electromagnetic radiation endowed with orbital angular momentum (OAM) aligns dipoles along the direction of travel of the radiation, but at a much higher percentage as high as 100% of the dipoles in the region can be aligned. Resultantly, resonance signals emanating from the region are several orders of magnitude stronger than signals emanated using traditional MRI techniques. All electromagnetic radiation, including visible light can be endowed with OAM and used to hyperpolarize a region of interest.
