Non-Invasive Assessment of Myocardial Iron using MRI: Feasibility Study

Excess myocardial iron can result in heart failure, the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in transfusion-dependent thalassemia patients. Accurate and reproducible quantification of myocardial iron deposition is important because effective chelation therapy can be initiated and cardiomyopathy can be averted. There is increasing interest in determining non-invasive approaches to assess myocardial iron deposition, including MRI. The R2*-mapping method is very sensitive to the presence of iron in tissue; however, the method is limited by susceptibility effects caused by macroscopic magnetic field inhomogeneities. This study will test the feasibility of a new technique for correcting background magnetic field susceptibilities in cardiac R2* measurements, and compare it to conventional (uncorrected) measurements in 15 healthy subjects.