Maximum entropy processing of DOSY NMR spectra

The measure of translational diffusion using pulsed field gradient NMR has seen a recent renewal of interest with the development of the DOSY experiment (Morris, K. F.; Johnson, C. S., Jr. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1992, 114, 3139), which has a wide field of application as a noninvasive analytical method. In the case of spectral superpositions or of polydisperse species, the processing of the DOSY experiment requires a Laplace transform analysis because this analysis does not make any assumption on the data. We present here the use of the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) technique for this processing and compare this method with the other approaches currently used in the literature, We found that MaxEnt produces simultaneously an accurate estimate of the amplitudes of the components of the Laplace spectrum and a reliable detection of their positions.