[en] It has been proposed that increased brain iron is a nonspecific marker of neuropathology and may arise from the interruption of iron transport pathways or directly from cell injury. The purpose of this paper is to derive reliable and quantified standards for brain iron in carefully screened normal subjects and relate these to normal aging, so that pathologic accumulations of iron can be more reliably diagnosed. The patient population consisted of 49 volunteers who were carefully screened by means of extensive risk factor analysis and neuropsychiatric testing. Continguous-section spin-echo MR imaging was performed at 1.5 T (TR, 3,000 msec, TE, 30 and 80 msec). Volume calculations were performed with a previously verified segmentation program based on semiautomatic partitioning of bifeature space