Renal volumetry with magnetic resonance imaging.

BACKGROUND: No gold standard exists for renal volumetry in vivo.

PURPOSE: To devise and evaluate segmentation methods on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) datasets.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Five combinations of MRI pulse sequences and measuring methods were used to measure the renal volumes of five men aged 54-72 years scanned before autologous renal stem cell transplantation and three, six, and 12 months post transplantation.

RESULTS: Renal volume did not change after stem cell transplantation. The results varied considerably: the reproducibility (coefficient of variation) was 4.0-6.0% and measurements took 1-13 min per kidney. Manual segmentation of images from the volumetric interpolated breath-hold examination (VIBE) without fat saturation sequence provided best reproducibility but was time-consuming. Use of the ellipsoid formula from half Fourier acquisition single shot turbo spin echo (HASTE) provided the fastest measurement, but resulted in lower reproducibility.

CONCLUSION: Renal volumetry based on images from the pulse sequence VIBE without fat saturation acquired using an out-of-phase TE may be investigated further, possibly in combination with the quick ellipsoid formula.