Assessment of Renal Function in Chronic Renal Insufficiency by Multiparametric Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Background: renal morphology can be studied via MRI accurately with no need to expose the patient to radiation and without using iodinated contrast. DWI is one of the advanced MRI techniques utilized for characterizing tissues depending upon the Brownian motion of H2O molecules within them. Objectives: The aim of this work was to determine the relationship between ADC and FA value of the parenchymal tissue of the kidney, blood markers, and staging of CKD Methods: This study was a Case–control study performed in the Radiology department, Beni-Suef University Hospital between July 2022 and October 2023 on 20 patients with CKD and 20 control subjects. For all cases, a detailed history was taken, clinical assessment was done in addition to estimation of kidney functions, US, and MRI with DWI. Results: Patients with CKD showed significantly lower ADC values in the cortex and medulla of upper, middle, and lower kidney compared to controls. These values were evident in both the left kidney and right kidney. As regards FA value, our study found that patients with CKD had a significantly lower FA value than controls in the medulla of the upper, middle, and lower kidneys. However, for the cortex, the FA values were significantly only for the left upper and lower cortex. Conclusion: ADC value decreases with higher stages of kidney failure, thus it might be employed as one of the indirect markers of kidney functions as an easy and non-invasive modality with no need for contrast media usage. The lower the ADC values the higher the kidney failure stage. DW MRI is capable of detecting early stages of kidney failure even if the serum markers are within normal ranges.