Marine Beaumont1, Isaac Odame2, Paul S. Babyn, Logi Vidarsson, Melanie Kirby-Allen2, Hai-Ling Margaret Cheng1,3
1Research Institute & Diagnostic Imaging, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 2Haematology/Oncology, The Hospital for Sick Children; 3Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
A rapid T2*-based method for liver iron measurement in children is desirable to avoid sedation. Twenty patients with thalassaemia major and sickle cell disease were enrolled to assess the accuracy of T2* measurements and to compare different analysis models. The commonly used constant offset model is robust to noise but tends to overestimate true iron content. The truncated model is accurate and can be optimized to measure high iron levels with appropriate echo time selection and SNR. Overall, results show that T2* measurements are as reliable as those from slower T2 acquisitions approved for MR liver iron quantification.