Quantitative measurement of renal oxygenation in human using QSM and pCASL

Abstract

Measuring the renal oxygenation level is important because it is related to the progress of kidney diseases such as chronic kidney disease. In this study, we noninvasively quantified and mapped the renal metabolic rate of oxygen (RMRO2) using quantitative susceptibility mapping and pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling and evaluated the results using the caffeine challenge. The results demonstrated higher renal oxygenation in the medulla than the cortex, and lower renal oxygenation on the caffeine day compared to the control day, as expected. This technique can be applied to identifying patients at risk of kidney diseases with no contrast agent.