الفهرس 
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Abstract
Thalassemia is one of the most common genetic disorder in the world (Muncie and Campbell, 2009). Frequent blood transfusion as a part of treatment of major thalassemia is often linked to overload of iron that can be deposited in many organs especially in the liver and heart. Iron chelators are used routinely to treat iron overload. For correct use of these drugs, an accurate measurement of levels of iron is necessary. Several methods are applied to measure iron levels. The most accurate method to measure level of iron is liver biopsy; however, it is invasive and unable to provide an accurate measurement of iron level in the heart (Singer, 2009 and Schrier, 1994).
During recent years, non-invasive methods have gained prominence. Magnetic resonance T2-star (T2* MRI) is a method for assessment of high molecular weight iron complexes induced T2 relaxation enhancement like ferritin and hemosiderin. T2* MRI can measure levels of iron in the liver (Deborah et al., 2008, Hankins et al., 2009 and Marget et al., 2012).
Magnetic resonance can exploit the paramagnetic properties of tissue iron to provide non-invasive, direct iron assessments, clinically this has been achieved by assessing the T2 and T2 * relaxation parameters (Westwood et al., 2003). Magnetic resonance does not image the iron directly but it images water protons as they diffuse near iron deposits in tissues of interest (Ghugre et al., 2005).