Special issue on magnetic resonance imaging biomarkers of renal disease

Excerpt

The idea of using MRI to assess renal function dates back to the early 1980s, when Runge et al. demonstrated that serial MRI after contrast agent injection revealed temporal patterns that were able to diagnose acute changes in renal function [1]. In the same period, Pettigrew et al. demonstrated that fast imaging sequences could isolate renal perfusion [2], and concluded that “in the future, MR imaging […] may simultaneously provide good morphological detail and the type of physiologic information currently offered noninvasively by nuclear medicine techniques”. Ever since, functional renal MRI has been an active field of research within the MRI community. Commonly cited methods include diffusion-weighted imaging [3], diffusion-tensor imaging [4], blood-oxygenation-level-dependent MRI [5] and arterial spin labelling [6], but many others have shown a relevant signal in the kidney: phase-contrast, T1-mapping, T2-mapping, sodium, magnetisation transfer, chemical exchange saturation transfer, spectroscopy, rotating frame relaxation, elastography, volumetry, quantitative susceptibility mapping and hyperpolarised MRI. …