Iron Quantification in Normal Aging Brain Accessed by the MR Signal Decay in the Static Spin Dephasing Regime of Spherical Perturbations

Jan Sedlacik¹, Kai Boelmans², Ulrike Lbel¹, Brigitte Holst¹, Susanne Siemonsen¹, Jens Fiehler¹

MRI is able to quantitatively detect iron deposition by changes in transverse relaxation rates and signal phase. Recently, quantitative susceptibility mapping was used to further extract the underlying magnetic susceptibility from the MR signal phase information. Purpose of this study was to demonstrate that true quantitative iron content can be derived from the transverse relaxation rates by using the analytical model of the static spin dephasing regimen of spherical perturbations. The established control values of iron content in the normal aging brain will serve as control for future clinical studies of neurodegenerative diseases at our institution.