• Hua Guo, Wing-Yan Au, Jerry S Cheung, Daniel Kim, Jens H Jensen, Pek-Lan Khong, Queenie Chan, Kevin C Chan, Christina Tosti, Haiying Tang, Truman R Brown, Wynnie W M Lam, Shau-Yin Ha, Gary M Brittenham, and Ed X Wu.
• Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China.
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2009 Aug 1; 30 (2): 394-400.

PurposeTo investigate the feasibility of measuring myocardial T2 at 3 Tesla for assessment of tissue iron in thalassemia major and other iron overloaded patients.Materials And MethodsA single-breathhold electrocardiogram-triggered black-blood multi-echo spin-echo (MESE) sequence with a turbo factor of 2 was implemented at 3 Tesla (T). Myocardial and liver T2 values were measured with three repeated breathholds in 8 normal subjects and 24 patients. Their values, together with the T2 values measured using a breathhold multi-echo gradient-echo sequence, were compared with those at 1.5T in the same patients.ResultsAt 3T, myocardial T2 was found to be 39.6 +/- 7.4 ms in normal subjects. In patients, it ranged from 12.9 to 50.1 ms. "T2 and T2(*) [corrected] were observed to correlate in heart (rho = 0.93, P [corrected] < 0.0001) and liver (rho = 0.95, P < 0.0001). Myocardial T2 and T2 at 3T were also highly correlated with the 1.5T measurements. Preliminary results indicated that myocardial T2 quantitation was relatively insensitive to B1 variation, and reproducible with 3.2% intra-exam and 3.8% inter-exam variations.ConclusionMyocardial T2 quantitation is feasible at 3T. Given the substantially decreased T2 and increased B0 inhomogeneity, the rapid myocardial T2 measurement protocol demonstrated here may present a robust alternative to study cardiac iron overload at 3T.(c) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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