Are all susceptibility maps created equal? – An investigation of the impact of the field-to-source inversion step on the study outcome in patient-control group studies.

Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) is a relatively new post-processing technique for susceptibility-weighted gradient-recalled echo (GRE) phase images. The technique numerically solves an ill-posed inverse mathematical problem to reveal the tissue magnetic susceptibility distribution. Due to its uniquely high sensitivity on the tissue concentrations of myelin, calcium and iron, QSM is increasingly being applied in clinical studies of neurological diseases that are affected by demyelination and a disturbed iron homeostasis, such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson’s disease. In the present work, to better understand the comparability and reproducibility of QSM studies, we evaluated several widely-used inversion algorithms concerning their ability to detect differences in susceptibility between two different groups of subjects, a typical scenario in clinical research.