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Assessment of Kidney Volume in Polycystic Kidney Disease Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging without Contrast Medium

2011; Karger Publishers; Volume: 33; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1159/000324039

1421-9670

Renzo Mignani, Cristiana Corsi, Mariangela De Marco, Enrico G. Caiani, Gioele Santucci, Enrico Cavagna, Stefano Severi, L Cagnoli,

Pediatric Urology and Nephrology Studies

Total renal volume (TRV) is an important index to evaluate the progression of autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). TRV has been assessed by manually tracing renal contours from CT or MR scans, often employing contrast medium (CM). We developed a fast and nearly automated technique based on the analysis of MR images acquired without CM injection for TRV quantification.30 ADPKD patients underwent MRI. After the selection of one point inside each kidney for the entire volume, the automatic extraction of kidney contours was performed on each acquired slice; the segmentation procedure was based on region growing and on the application of morphological operators and curvature-based motion. The area inside each contour was calculated and TRV was derived. Volume measurements were validated by comparison with measurements obtained by stereology.TRV estimated in patients was 768 ± 545 ml (range 161-3,111 ml). The automatic measurements were in excellent correlation with the manual ones (r = 0.99, y = x - 0.7), with a small bias and narrow limits of agreement in both absolute (-5 ± 37 ml) and percentage (-0.6 ± 9.6%) terms.This preliminary study showed the feasibility of a fast and nearly automated method for determining TRV; importantly it does not require the use of potentially nephrotoxic CM.