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These studies have almost exclusively employed the Stejskal\u2013Tanner (ST) pulse sequence, which is sensitive to the ensemble average propagator (EAP). EAP is a compromised version of the true diffusion propagator\u2014a quantity that fully describes the diffusion process in any system and holds exquisite information that can be used to characterize complex samples. Recently, a new diffusion sensitization method was proposed, here referred to as PROP, and was shown to be capable of acquiring the true diffusion propagator in closed pores. However, its adequate use requires a large number of measurements and (consequently) a long acquisition time. Thus, its translation to, e.g. the clinical field, is challenging. Here, we propose a reduced PROP pulse sequence (rPROP) which offers various advantages over the ST sequence. rPROP excels at isolating restricted diffusion thanks to its inherently high diffusion-weighting, yielding an efficient free diffusion filter. We employ rPROP to study different samples, and compare its performance to ST measurements in terms of estimation accuracy and gradient amplitude requirements. Furthermore, we study the capability of rPROP to detect anisotropic diffusion in samples which predominantly feature isotropic diffusion. Finally, we present a method capable of acquiring the mean position distribution (analogous to the EAP attainable via ST data) of particles via MR measurements. We highlight that all signals and images presented in this work were acquired using a benchtop MRI scanner.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/pnasnexus\/pgag293","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,5]],"date-time":"2026-09-05T16:08:52Z","timestamp":1788624532000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Detecting and characterizing restricted diffusion with accessible magnetic field gradients"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"5","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0287-2166","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alfredo","family":"Ordinola","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biomedical Engineering (IMT), Link\u00f6ping University , Link\u00f6ping S-58185 ,","place":["Sweden"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9045-0889","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Magnus","family":"Herberthson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mathematics (MAI), Link\u00f6ping University , Link\u00f6ping S-58330 ,","place":["Sweden"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Walker Scot","family":"Jackson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences (BKV), Link\u00f6ping University , Link\u00f6ping S-58185 ,","place":["Sweden"]},{"name":"University of Luxembourg Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine, , L-4367 Belvaux ,","place":["Luxembourg"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0859-1311","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Evren","family":"\u00d6zarslan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biomedical Engineering (IMT), Link\u00f6ping University , Link\u00f6ping S-58185 ,","place":["Sweden"]},{"name":"Link\u00f6ping University Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV), , Link\u00f6ping ,","place":["Sweden"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026091805062998900_pgag293-B1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"288","DOI":"10.1063\/1.1695690","article-title":"Spin diffusion measurements: spin echoes in the presence of a time-dependent field gradient","volume":"42","author":"Stejskal","year":"1965","journal-title":"J Chem Phys"},{"key":"2026091805062998900_pgag293-B2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"259","DOI":"10.1016\/S0006-3495(94)80775-1","article-title":"MR diffusion tensor spectroscopy and imaging","volume":"66","author":"Basser","year":"1994","journal-title":"Biophys J"},{"key":"2026091805062998900_pgag293-B3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"277","DOI":"10.1002\/cmr.a.20117","article-title":"Laplacian eigenfunctions in NMR. 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