ACCURATE assessment of body-iron accumulation is essential for managing therapy of iron-chelating diseases characterized by iron overload such as thalassemia, hereditary hemochromatosis, and other forms of severe anemia. At present, the gold standard to determine liver-iron concentration (LIC) is liver needle biopsy. Thalas an alternative non-invasive technique to measure LIC based on a room-temperature susceptometer (the technology is subject matter of an international patent application).

The Thalas susceptometer presented herein measures iron overload in the whole liver, as the entire human torso fits within its region of sensitivity. Since all of its components operate at room temperature, this susceptometer is more affordable then competing techniques and can reach a wider hospital base.
The signal picked up by the susceptometer has two sources: an overall magnetic background of the torso and an eventual contribution from liver iron excess. After measuring the magnetic signature of a patient, statistical analysis method is employed to estimate the background signal, given the patient anthropometric data. Liver-iron overload is then determined by subtraction of the estimated background from the total measured signal. The refinement of the methodology is in progress and, at present, the error in liver iron is about 1g (SD), corresponding to a concentration of 0.5 mg/cm3 for a 2 l liver volume.