A method for characterizing a property of a material, comprising: exposing, using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) apparatus, the material to a NMR fingerprinting pulse sequence using an echo splitting technique, where the NMR fingerprinting pulse sequence includes: a series of variable sequence blocks, where a sequence block includes one or more excitation periods and one or more readout periods and at least one member of the series of variable sequence blocks differs from at least one other member of the series of variable sequence blocks in at least N sequence block parameters, N being an integer equal to or greater than two; wherein the one or more excitation periods comprise an initial RF pulse, and one or more echo splitting RF pulses, to produce a magnetization in a resonant species in the material and to divide the magnetization to produce two or more different echo paths, wherein the one or more readout periods include a readout gradient configured to facilitate acquiring NMR signals from two or more echo paths, characterizing the property by comparing first information associated with the NMR signals acquired from the material in response to the NMR fingerprinting pulse sequence to reference information associated with the NMR fingerprinting pulse sequence, where the first information includes two or more signal evolutions generated from the two or more different echo paths; and generating at least one map indicating the characterizing of the property of the material. exposing, using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) apparatus, the material to a NMR fingerprinting pulse sequence using an echo splitting technique, where the NMR fingerprinting pulse sequence includes: a series of variable sequence blocks, where a sequence block includes one or more excitation periods and one or more readout periods and at least one member of the series of variable sequence blocks differs from at least one other member of the series of variable sequence blocks in at least N sequence block parameters, N being an integer equal to or greater than two; wherein the one or more excitation periods comprise an initial RF pulse, and one or more echo splitting RF pulses, to produce a magnetization in a resonant species in the material and to divide the magnetization to produce two or more different echo paths, wherein the one or more readout periods include a readout gradient configured to facilitate acquiring NMR signals from two or more echo paths, a series of variable sequence blocks, where a sequence block includes one or more excitation periods and one or more readout periods and at least one member of the series of variable sequence blocks differs from at least one other member of the series of variable sequence blocks in at least N sequence block parameters, N being an integer equal to or greater than two; wherein the one or more excitation periods comprise an initial RF pulse, and one or more echo splitting RF pulses, to produce a magnetization in a resonant species in the material and to divide the magnetization to produce two or more different echo paths, wherein the one or more readout periods include a readout gradient configured to facilitate acquiring NMR signals from two or more echo paths, characterizing the property by comparing first information associated with the NMR signals acquired from the material in response to the NMR fingerprinting pulse sequence to reference information associated with the NMR fingerprinting pulse sequence, where the first information includes two or more signal evolutions generated from the two or more different echo paths; and generating at least one map indicating the characterizing of the property of the material. <EOS>