Quantitative renal perfusion measurements in a rat model of acute kidney injury at 3T: Testing inter- and intramethodical significance of ASL and DCE-MRI

Objectives: To establish arterial spin labelling (ASL) for quantitative renal perfusion measurements in a rat model at 3 Tesla and to test the diagnostic significance of ASL and dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) in a model of acute kidney injury (AKI).Material and Methods: ASL and DCE-MRI were consecutively employed on six Lewis rats, five of which had a unilateral ischaemic AKI. All measurements in this study were performed on a 3 Tesla MR scanner using a FAIR True-FISP approach and a TWIST sequence for ASL and DCE-MRI, respectively. Perfusion maps were calculated for both methods and the cortical perfusion of healthy and diseased kidneys was inter-and intramethodically compared using a region-of-interest based analysis.Results/Significance: Both methods produce significantly different values for the healthy and the diseased kidneys (