Calibration of Confounder-Corrected R2* for Liver Iron Quantification at 1.5T and 3T: Preliminary Results

Diego Hernando¹, Naila Qazi¹, Scott B. Reeder¹, ²

Measurement of liver iron concentration (LIC) is needed for detection and treatment monitoring of iron overload. R2-based techniques (eg: Ferriscan) are accurate at 1.5T, however they require long acquisition times. R2*-based techniques are fast, but suffer from several confounding factors: liver fat, background B0 variations and noise floor effects. In this work, we calibrated confounder-corrected R2*-based LIC quantification at 1.5T and 3T using multiple different protocols, with Ferriscan-LIC (1.5T) as reference standard. Nearly identical calibrations were obtained with different protocols at each field strength, suggesting that R2* may provide accurate and robust LIC quantification if relevant confounding factors are addressed.