Jens-Peter Khn1, 2, Diego Hernando1, Norbert Hosten2, Scott B. Reeder1, 3
1Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research USA, Madison, WI, United States; 2Department of Diagnostic Radiology, University Greifswald, Greifswald, MV, Germany; 3Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering and Medicine, Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research USA, Madison, WI, United States
Chemical shift-encoded MRI methods provide measures of liver fat, and also R2*, a biomarker for hepatic iron content. Previous works have shown that correcting for the spectral complexity of fat (multi-peak modeling) is necessary for accurate fat quantification, however it is unknown whether it is necessary for accurate iron quantification. In this work, we investigated the impact of multi-peak fat modeling on R2* measurements to assess hepatic iron content, using biopsy as reference standard. In the presence of fat, single-peak fat modeling results in clinically significant errors in R2* quantification. Multi-peak fat modeling removes these errors and is necessary for accurate hepatic iron quantification.
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