Assessing global and regional iron content in deep gray matter as a function of age using susceptibility mapping.

Purpose: To investigate the correlation of non-heme iron content in deep gray matter nuclei as a function of age using quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) from both whole-structural and regional perspectives.

Materials And Methods: We studied a group of 174 normal subjects ranging from 20 to 69 years old and measured the magnetic susceptibility of seven subcortical gray matter nuclei. SWI (susceptibility-weighted imaging) phase images were used to generate the susceptibility maps, which were acquired on a 1.