Taigang He1, 2, Yanqiu Feng3, Rongrong Liu4, John-Paul Carpenter1, Andrew Jabbour1, Yongrong lai4, Dudley Pennell1, David Firmin1, 2
1CMR Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital, London, United Kingdom; 2NHLI, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom; 3School of Biomedical Engineering, Sourthern Medical University, China; 4Department of Hematology, The first affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, China
Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) T2* can provide a non-invasive means of measuring tissue iron in the heart. We have found that T2*< 20ms represents iron overload in the heart, and that T2*<10ms predicts risk of heart faliure in patients with thalassemia major. In this study, we aimed at clustering patients automatically into normal and abnormal groups by using Gaussian mixture models. This study confirms statistically that T2* is a reliable tool for screening patients with iron overload. The results agree well with T2* cut-off value of 20ms and 10ms commonly used in clinical practice.