Assessment of kidney volume in XXXX using magnetic resonance imaging without contrast medium.

@entity1 @entity15510 @entity8
BACKGROUND/AIMS: Total renal volume ( @entity15510 ) is an important index to evaluate the progression of @entity8 ( @entity8 ). @entity15510 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 @entity15510 quantification. METHODS: 30 @entity8 @entity1 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 @entity15510 was derived. Volume measurements were validated by comparison with measurements obtained by stereology. RESULTS: @entity15510 estimated in @entity1 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. CONCLUSION: This preliminary study showed the feasibility of a fast and nearly automated method for determining @entity15510 ; importantly it does not require the use of potentially nephrotoxic CM.
