Meeting Banner
Abstract #1440

An Automatic Method for Myocardial T2* Curve Fitting in Thalassemia Patients with Severe Iron Overload

Vincenzo Positano1, Antonella Meloni1, Maria Filomena Santarelli1, Luigi Landini1, Carmelo Fidone2, Maria Antonietta Romeo3, Letizia Gulino1, Elisabetta Chiodi4, Antonino Vallone5, Massimo Lombardi1, Alessia Pepe1

1CMR Unit, Fondazione G. Monasterio CNR-Regione Toscana and Institute of Clinical Physiology, Pisa, Italy; 2U.O.S. di Microcitemia, Az. Osp. Civile, O.M.P.A. di Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; 3Dipartimento Pediatria, Azienda Policlinico, Catania, Italy; 4Servizio Radiologia Ospedaliera-Universitaria, Arcispedale S. Anna di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy; 5Istituto di Radiologia Az. Osp. "Garibaldi", Presidio Ospedaliero Nesima, Catania, Italy


T2* multislice multiecho MRI allows quantification of myocardial iron overload by fitting the signal decay curves to a mono-exponential model. In patients with severe cardiac iron overload, where the signal decays quickly becoming comparable to image noise, manual truncation of signal decay curves excluding later echo times is adopted.