Figure 1.

Cardiac short-axis left ventricular MR images of three patients with similar parameters (TE=8 ms). The images illustrate the different degrees of hepatic and cardiac iron accumulation, which is seen as a signal drop. A signal intensity of myocardium was measured with constant region of interest (oval line) from MR images in each patient. Subphrenic liver, marked with an asterisk, is situated at the lower part of the image. (a) A patient with ALL; normal level of cardiac R2^* (30 1/s) with only slightly elevated hepatic iron concentration (40 μmol/g). There is no visible signal drop found in the liver or the heart. (b) A patient with AML; cardiac R2^* (37 1/s) was normal, although there was heavy hepatic iron overload (380 μmol/g). The liver signal dropped owing to the severe iron overload, giving more contrast to the normal cardiac tissue. (c) A patient with MDS; pathologically low R2^* (85 1/s), indicating cardiac iron overload with simultaneous severe hepatic iron overload (488 μmol/g). The figure shows the signal drop of both cardiac and hepatic tissue due to excess iron.