Pairash Saiviroonporn1, Vip Viprakasit2,
Thananya Boonyasirinant3, John C. Wood4, Rungroj
Krittayaphong3
1Radiology Department,
Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand; 2Haematology/Oncology
Division, Department of Pediatrics & Thalassemia Center, Faculty of
Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University; 3Division of
Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital,
Mahidol University; 4Divisions of Cardiology, Department of
Pediatrics, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Keck School of Medicine,
University of Southern California, United States
The study compared the observer variability of the conventional Region-Based (RB) to the typical and proposed Pixel-Wise (PW) methods for cardiac T2* analysis in thalassemia patients. Fifty thalassemia major patients were enrolled for the study. Short axis bright- and black-blood sequences were acquired and analyzed using the RB and PW methods. Regions were defined using the whole interventricular septum (WS) or partial septum (PS). The proposed Pixel-Wise method using median of T2* values calculated from PS region provided lower intra- and inter-observer variability as compared to the conventional Region-Based or typical Pixel-Wise methods on both scanning techniques.