A method of extracting information about a sample comprising: performing a plurality of magnetic resonance measurements (402-1, 402-n) on the sample, each measurement including subjecting the sample to an encoding sequence, at least a part of the sequence being adapted to encode a magnetic resonance signal attenuation due to nuclear relaxation and diffusion, wherein at least one parameter of a gradient pulse sequence is varied between at least a subset of said plurality of measurements, and at least one measurement of said subset includes a gradient pulse sequence having a diffusion-encoding tensor representation with more than one non-zero eigenvalue, and wherein at least a subset of said plurality of measurements include encoding for different levels of magnetic resonance signal attenuation due to nuclear relaxation; and extracting information about the sample from signals resulting from said plurality of magnetic resonance measurements, the information including nuclear relaxation and diffusion characteristics for the sample, wherein extracting the information includes estimating a representation of a probability distribution indicating a probability to find a particular combination of nuclear relaxation characteristics and diffusion characteristics in the sample, the nuclear relaxation characteristics and diffusion characteristics including, respectively: an estimate of a longitudinal and/or a transverse relaxation rate, and one or more estimate(s) of: an isotropic diffusion, an anisotropic diffusion and an orientation of a diffusion tensor D representing diffusion for a component in the sample; characterized in that the probability distribution is estimated by determining a solution to an equation relating echo signals resulting from said plurality of measurements to a product of a kernel and the probability distribution, wherein components of the kernel are based on acquisition parameters, the diffusion characteristics and the nuclear relaxation characteristics. performing a plurality of magnetic resonance measurements (402-1, 402-n) on the sample, each measurement including subjecting the sample to an encoding sequence, at least a part of the sequence being adapted to encode a magnetic resonance signal attenuation due to nuclear relaxation and diffusion, wherein at least one parameter of a gradient pulse sequence is varied between at least a subset of said plurality of measurements, and at least one measurement of said subset includes a gradient pulse sequence having a diffusion-encoding tensor representation with more than one non-zero eigenvalue, and wherein at least a subset of said plurality of measurements include encoding for different levels of magnetic resonance signal attenuation due to nuclear relaxation; and extracting information about the sample from signals resulting from said plurality of magnetic resonance measurements, the information including nuclear relaxation and diffusion characteristics for the sample, wherein extracting the information includes estimating a representation of a probability distribution indicating a probability to find a particular combination of nuclear relaxation characteristics and diffusion characteristics in the sample, the nuclear relaxation characteristics and diffusion characteristics including, respectively: an estimate of a longitudinal and/or a transverse relaxation rate, and one or more estimate(s) of: an isotropic diffusion, an anisotropic diffusion and an orientation of a diffusion tensor D representing diffusion for a component in the sample; characterized in that the probability distribution is estimated by determining a solution to an equation relating echo signals resulting from said plurality of measurements to a product of a kernel and the probability distribution, wherein components of the kernel are based on acquisition parameters, the diffusion characteristics and the nuclear relaxation characteristics. <EOS>