Abstract #3305

Song R, Lin W, Wehrli F, Asakura T, Song H, Chen Q

Transverse relaxation rates, including R2*, R2 and R2', of thalassemic murine livers have been investigated using the GESFIDE (gradient-echo sam-pling of free induction decay and echo) technique at 1.5 and 3T field strengths. The parameters were all well correlated with murine liver iron content at both 1.5 and 3T (r = 0.72-0.79). Within the range of iron concentrations investigated, there was also a high degree of linear correlation among the three parameters (r = 0.93-0.99). The relaxivities for all three rates were approximately doubled at the higher field strength, in agreement with previ-ous observations.