Tatsuyuki Tonan1, Kiminori Fujimoto1,
Aliya Qayyum2, Takumi Kawaguchi3, Atsushi Kawaguchi4,
Koji Okuda5, Shuji Nagata1, Michio Sata3,
Naofumi Hayabuchi1
1Radiology, Kurume University School of
Medicine, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan; 2Radiology and Biomedical
Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United
States; 3Internal Medicine, Kurume University School of Medicine,
Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan; 4Biostatistics Center, Kurume University
School of Medicine, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan; 5Surgery, Kurume
University School of Medicine, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan
MRI
is sensitive to tissue iron overload because iron leads to a decline of
magnetic resonance signal due to T2-shortening effect related to the
paramagnetic properties, and recently has become suitable technique for
quantifying hepatic iron overload noninvasively. The aim of this study is to
assess the usefulness of echo-planar image based diffusion- weighted image
(EPI-DWI) for quantifying subtle hepatic iron stores. We found a good
correlation between EPI-DWI and hepatic iron concentration in patients with
viral hepatitis, and demonstrated that EPI-DWI was more sensitive sequence
for quantifying hepatic iron overload than gradient-recalled echo sequence.