Magnetic resonance imaging of transfusional hepatic iron overload

The transfusional iron overload in 11 adult patients suffering from haematological malignancy was studied in 14 consecutive 1.0 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies. Routine T1- and T2-weighted spin echo sequences and a fat suppressed sequence (STIR) were used. The ratio from a region of interest of the liver parenchyma and from a manganese chloride reference phantom was measured. There was a definite difference between the signal ratio from the haematological patient group and the control group (p = 0.0001). The patients showed a diminished signal ratio in all pulse sequences used. There was a statistically significant inverse linear correlation between the number of transfused red cell units and the signal ratio in the T1-weighted (p = 0.03) and the T2-weighted (p = 0.03) images. A definite decrease of the effect is found after 20-30 red cell unit transfusions in T2-weighted and STIR images.