A MRI quality assurance phantom with a base and a vertical body mounted on the base. At lease one of the base and the vertical body have a housing made of a MRI invisible material and enclose a sealed reservoir filed with a MRI signal producing material. The vertical body has a generally planar face with one or more attachment points thereon for attachment of one or more accessories to the face of the vertical body. The interior walls of the housing, defining the shape of the sealed reservoir, have one or more defined structures formed thereon, suitable for image quality testing.

Systems and methods are disclosed for increasing a nuclear spin polarization of a target compound. In accordance with such systems and methods, a first non-thermal equilibrium nuclear spin polarization can be imparted to at least one source atom of a source compound, the source atom having a nuclear gyromagnetic ratio of at least 12 megahertz per tesla (MHz/T). A first solution can be obtained that includes the source compound and a target compound. The at least one source atom can be present in a source concentration of at least 0.1 molar (M) in the first solution. A second non-thermal equilibrium nuclear spin polarization of at least 0.01% can be imparted to the at least one target atom of the target compound via a nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) transfer of the first non-thermal equilibrium nuclear spin polarization to the at least one target atom.