• Tabassum Laz Haque, Yukio Miki, Mitsunori Kanagaki, Takahiro Takahashi, Akira Yamamoto, Junya Konishi, Kazuhiko Nozaki, Nobuo Hashimoto, and Junji Konishi.
• Department of Nuclear Medicine and Diagnostic Imaging, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan.
• Eur J Radiol. 2003 Dec 1; 48 (3): 230-6.

ObjectiveTo compare the magnetic resonance image contrasts due to ferritin and hemosiderin in the brain tissue among different pulse sequences.Materials And MethodsFourteen patients with cavernous hemangioma in the brain prospectively underwent MR imaging with T2*-weighted gradient-echo (GRE), T2-weighted conventional spin-echo (SE) and fast spin-echo (FSE) sequences. The relative contrast ratios (CRs) of the hypointense part of cavernous hemangioma, globus pallidus and putamen to the deep frontal white matter were measured on each pulse sequence and statistically analyzed using analysis of variance followed by paired t-test.ResultsIn the hypointense part of cavernous hemangioma, relative CRs were significantly lower on T2*-weighted GRE than on T2-weighted SE images (P=0.0001), and on T2-weighted SE than on T2-weighted FSE images (P=0.0001). In the globus pallidus, relative CRs were significantly lower on T2-weighted SE than on T2*-weighted GRE images (P=0.002), and on T2*-weighted GRE than on T2-weighted FSE images (P=0.0002). In the putamen, relative CRs were significantly lower on T2-weighted SE than on T2*-weighted GRE images (P=0.001), and there was no significant difference between CRs on T2-weighted FSE and T2*-weighted GRE images (P=0.90).ConclusionHemosiderin showed best image contrast on T2*-weighted GRE images but ferritin showed more prominent image contrast on T2-weighted SE than on T2*-weighted GRE images, which may help to determine an appropriate pulse sequence in neurological diseases associated with excessive ferritin accumulation.

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