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.