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Updated: Sep 18, 2025
Author Spotlight: A Non-Invasive Tool to Assess and Differentiate Fat Patterns in Liver Using 3D Dixon MRI
Published on: October 20, 2023
Streamlining liver iron assessment: accuracy and limitations of 3D qDixon MRI for liver iron overload quantification
Fei Peng1, Chaotian Luo1, Xiaojing Ning1
1Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning 530021 Guangxi, China.
Objective:
To prospectively evaluate the accuracy and limitations of the 1.5 T 3D-Dixon sequence (qDixon) in quantifying liver iron concentration (LIC), using FerriScan technology-determined LIC and the 1.5 T multi-echo GRE sequence (ME-GRE) as reference standards.
Methods:
A total of 161 chronic transfusion-dependent patients, 83 men and 43 women with a mean age of 21.04 years, were scanned using ME-GRE and qDixon sequences; among them, 67 were scanned using FerriScan technology. R2* values (ME-GRE-R2* and qDixon-R2*) and LIC were obtained for both sequences. Comparative analysis was conducted using concordance correlation coefficients (CCC), Bland-Altman plots, and linear regression. A piecewise regression model was constructed to determine the upper limit for quantifying LIC using the qDixon.
Results:
The qDixon-LIC and ME-GRE-LIC showed mean differences of 0.22, 0.01, -0.27, and 6.8 mg/g dry weight (dw) in normal, mild, moderate, and severe liver iron overload with corresponding CCC values of 0.986, 0.982, 0.956, and 0.216, respectively. The piecewise regression model established a 28.47 mg/g dw threshold for accurate liver iron quantification using qDixon, beyond which qDixon-R2* reached 892.86 s-1. Below this threshold, qDixon demonstrated a strong linear correlation with FerriScan in estimating LIC (r = 0.82, p < 0.001), with a negligible mean difference of 1.68 mg/g dw and a CCC of 0.984.
Conclusion:
The 1.5 T qDixon sequence can be used to quantitatively assess LIC within a specific range (LIC < 28.47 mg/g dw), simplifying clinical workflow procedures.
