Quantitative assessment of iron overload in liver of patients with thalassemia major using ultra-short T2*

Background: Iron accumulation in organs such as heart and liver can cause morbidity and mortality in transfusion-dependent patients with β-thalassemia major. MRI T2* relaxometry has been increasingly used in clinical practice for quantitative assessment of iron overload in heart and liver. For a heavily iron loaded liver, T2* is ultra-short (<1ms). In this scenario, conventional gradient echo sequence is limited because the initial echo time (TE) and echo spacing are usually more than 1ms due to hardware limit. Ultra-short T2* (<1ms) measurement would give more accurate assessment of iron deposition in the liver, which can lead to improved diagnosis and optimized iron-chelation treatment of patients in need.