Characterization of myocardial iron overload by dual-energy computed tomography compared to T2∗ MRI. A phantom study

Iron toxicity plays a key role in tissue damage in patients with iron overload, with induced heart failure being the main cause of death. T2*-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been established for evaluating myocardial iron overload with strong correlation with biopsy. The recently introduced dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) has the potential for evaluating iron overload without energy-dependent CT attenuation or tissue fat effects. This study investigates the performance of DECT for evaluating myocardial iron overload (based on images acquired at four different diagnostic imaging energies of 80, 100, 120, and 140 kVp) and compare the results to MRI T2* measurements based on DECT and MRI experiments on phantoms with calibrated iron concentrations. DECT showed high accuracy for evaluating iron overload compared to MRI T2* imaging, which might help in patient staging based on the degree of iron overload and independent of the implemented imaging energy.