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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Med.
Sec. Hepatobiliary Diseases
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1424294
This article is part of the Research Topic Investigations and Management of Hereditary Red Blood Cells Diseases View all 3 articles

Assessing the Accuracy of CMRtools Software for Diagnosing Liver Iron Overload in Thalassemia Patients: Influencing Factors and Optimisation Strategies

Provisionally accepted
Chaotian Luo Chaotian Luo Fei Peng Fei Peng Fengming Xu Fengming Xu Cheng Tang Cheng Tang *Yanyan Zhang Yanyan Zhang *Chaojie Huang Chaojie Huang *Linlin Liang Linlin Liang *Xiaojing Ning Xiaojing Ning *Peng Peng Peng Peng *
  • Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: CMRtools is a software package that can be used to measure T2* values to diagnose liver iron overload, however, its accuracy in terms is affected by multiple factors, including goodness-of-fit (R 2 value), the number of echo time (TE) images, and the liver iron concentration (LIC). To investigate the effects of the R 2 value, the number of TE images, and the LIC on the accuracy of CMRtools software for measuring T2* values to diagnose liver iron overload (LIO).CMRtools software was used to measure liver T2* values among 108 thalassemia patients via the truncation method, and the R 2 values, the number of TE images, and T2* values were recorded. These values were subsequently converted into liver iron concentration (LICT) values. The LICF (derived from MRI-R2/FerriScan) was used as a reference, and the diagnostic accordance rate (DAR) was compared between R 2 value subgroups, between TE image number subgroups, and between LIC subgroups.The greater the R 2 value was, the greater the standardized DAR (SDAR) was (P < 0.05). The SDAR are not identical between each TE image number subgroup (P > 0.05). However, the relationship between TE image number subgroups and SDAR was analysed using Spearman's correlation, and it was found to be positively correlated (rs = 0.729, P = 0.017). The SDAR are not identical between each LIC subgroup (P > 0.05), furthermore, the relationship between LIC subgroup and SDAR was found irrelevant (P = 0.747).The accuracy of CMRtools software for diagnosing LIO in patients with thalassemia can be improved by artificially controlling the number of TE images to be fitted and selecting higher R 2 values.

    Keywords: Liver, Iron Overload, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, T2* relaxometry, CMRtools, Thalassemia

    Received: 27 Apr 2024; Accepted: 10 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Luo, Peng, Xu, Tang, Zhang, Huang, Liang, Ning and Peng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Cheng Tang, Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China
    Yanyan Zhang, Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China
    Chaojie Huang, Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China
    Linlin Liang, Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China
    Xiaojing Ning, Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China
    Peng Peng, Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China

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