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Black-blood T2* technique for myocardial iron measurement in thalassemia
Taigang He1, Peter D Gatehouse, Paul Kirk
1Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College, Sydney Street, London, United Kingdom. t.he@ic.ac.uk
Purpose:
To compare the effectiveness and reproducibility of a new black-blood sequence vs. a conventional bright-blood gradient-echo T2* sequence for myocardial iron overload measurement in thalassemia.
Materials And Methods:
Twenty thalassemia patients were studied. Black-blood sequence images were acquired in diastole after a double inversion recovery (DIR) preparation pulse. Bright-blood sequence images were acquired in both early systole and late diastole. The data were randomized and the T2* analysis was performed blindly by two independent observers.
Results:
The T2* values from the black-blood sequence were comparable to those of the conventional bright-blood sequence (25.7 +/- 12.9 msec vs. 26.4 +/- 14.2 msec in early systole, P = 0.44; and 25.2 +/- 13.1 msec in late diastole, P = 0.41). The coefficient of variation (CV) for black-blood image T2* analysis was 4.1% compared with 8.9% (early systole P = 0.03) and 7.8% (late diastole P = 0.05) for bright-blood image analysis.
Conclusion:
The black-blood T2* technique yields high-contrast myocardial images, provides clearly depicted myocardial borders, and avoids blood signal contamination of the myocardium while yielding improvements in interobserver variability.
