Renal functional MRI in mice evaluated with a dual bolus of intravascular and diffusible contrast agents

Abstract

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of a dualbolus protocol, where a first bolus of an intravascular tracer is used to measure perfusion, followed by a second bolus of a freely filtered gadolinium-containing agent to measure filtration capacity. Methods: The study was conducted in mice subjected to complete unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO), and sham operated mice were used as controls. Dynamic contrast- en-hanced MRI was performed 2 days after surgery. Results and discussions: Mean signal-time curves of the renal cortex, renal medulla and abdominal aorta were used to calculate the relative renal blood flow (rRBF), relative renal blood volume (rRBV), mean transit time (MTT) and the glomerular transfer rate Ktrans. We demonstrated that kidneys suffering from two days of UUO showed a decrease in cortical as well as medullary rRBF compared to kidneys from sham-operated mice. Further, we found no changes in rRBV and MTT among groups, neither in the cortex nor in the medulla. The renal functional parameter Ktrans showed a tendency (but statistically insignificant) to be reduced in the ob-structed kidney compared to the sham-operated mice. Conclusions: We showed our first experiences with the consecutive use of intra- and extra-vascularly distributed agents in a renal-diseased mouse model, allowing analysis of both functional haemo- dyamics and filtration capacity in kidneys.