High-density bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) can be obtained by reducing the spacing between data bitislands in both the along-and across-track directions, thus leading to severe intersymbol interference (ISI) and intertrack interference (ITI) because of small bit and track pitches, respectively. Here, we propose to use the graph-based detector, instead of the trellis-based detector, in iterative decoding to combat the ISI and the ITI for a multi-head multi-track BPMR system. Specifically, the readback signal is sent to the graph-based detector before iteratively exchanging the soft information with a decoder. Experimental results indicate that at low to moderate complexity, the proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes, especially at high recording density.