Comparative Analysis of Liver Iron Concentration: Inline R2* of mDixon-Quant and Multi-Echo Gradient Echo Versus Spin Echo Method

Motivation: FDA approved Ferriscan spin echo (SE) method for estimating liver iron concentration(LIC) suffers from significant motion artifact, report delay and cost from third party process. The accurate LIC, short processing time and good quality images were required from clinical practice. Goal(s): Testing agreement of LIC between the two product sequences versus LICSE Approach: Comparing LIC, from inline R2* maps using: 3D mDixon-quant(mDixon) and multi-echo gradient echo (mGRE), to LICSE in a large population (126 clinical subjects) Results: LICmGRE agrees more closely than LICmDixon to LICSE in normal to mild iron overload cases while LICmDixon outperforms LICmGRE in moderate to severe iron overload cases. Impact: The Liver Iron Concentration (LIC) calculated using the inline R2*maps from both 3D mDixon and multi-echo GRE methods (mGRE) (each with single breath-hold of <12s) strongly correlated to the FDA approved Ferriscan spin echo (SE) based method.