Validation of liver quantitative susceptibility mapping across imaging parameters at 1.5 T and 3.0 T using SQUID susceptometry as reference.

PURPOSE

To validate QSM-based biomagnetic liver susceptometry (BLS) to measure liver iron overload at 1.5 T and 3.0 T using superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUID)-based BLS as reference.

METHODS

Subjects with known or suspected iron overload were recruited for QSM-BLS at 1.5 T and 3.0 T using eight different protocols. SQUID-BLS was also obtained in each subject to provide susceptibility reference. A recent QSM method based on data-adaptive regularization was used to obtain susceptibility and maps. Measurements of susceptibility and were obtained in the right liver lobe. Linear mixed-effects analysis was used to estimate the contribution of specific acquisition parameters to QSM-BLS. Linear regression and Bland-Altman analyses were used to assess the relationship between QSM-BLS and SQUID-BLS/ .

RESULTS

Susceptibility maps showed high subjective quality for each acquisition protocol across different iron levels. High linear correlation was observed between QSM-BLS and SQUID-BLS at 1.5 T (r range, [0.82, 0.84]) and 3.0 T (r range, [0.77, 0.85]) across different acquisition protocols. QSM-BLS and were highly correlated at both field strengths (r range at 1.5 T, [0.94, 0.99]; 3.0 T, [0.93, 0.99]). High correlation (r  = 0.99) between 1.5 T and 3.0 T QSM-BLS, with narrow reproducibility coefficients (range, [0.13, 0.21] ppm) were observed for each protocol.

CONCLUSION

This work evaluated the feasibility and performance of liver QSM-BLS across iron levels and acquisition protocols at 1.5 T and 3.0 T. High correlation and reproducibility were observed between QSM-BLS and SQUID-BLS across protocols and field strengths. In summary, QSM-BLS may enable reliable and reproducible quantification of liver iron concentration.