Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Language

English

Publication Date

12-1-2025

Journal

Magnetic Resonance in Medicine

DOI

10.1002/mrm.30641

PMID

40693363

PMCID

PMC12501682

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

7-22-2025

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Abstract

Purpose: This study investigates the application of CEST MRI in human kidneys, with the overarching goal of developing CEST MRI for renal mass characterization. Here, the focus is on the development of a protocol and the proof-of-principle evaluation of CEST for the characterization of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC).

Methods: Ten healthy volunteers and five patients diagnosed with ccRCC underwent CEST MRI scans at 3 T. The sequence performance was characterized in healthy volunteers and tested using three saturation power levels, B1rms = 0.7, 1.2, and 1.6 μT. We compared the magnetization transfer ratio asymmetry (MTRasym) values at 1.0, 2.0, and 3.5 ppm between the kidney cortex of healthy volunteers and the cortex/renal masses of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients. We also investigated the correlation of CEST with tumor characteristics, such as volume, necrosis percentage, and histopathological grade.

Results: Significant differences in MTRasym values were observed between ccRCC tumor regions and healthy kidney cortex in all three compared frequency offset ranges (p < 0.05). At the same time, MTRasym values in the cortex of the contralateral kidney in RCC patients were not significantly different when compared with the values of healthy kidney cortex values (p > 0.7).

Conclusion: CEST MRI demonstrates considerable potential as a non-invasive imaging tool for the characterization of renal masses.

Keywords

Humans, Kidney Neoplasms, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Carcinoma, Renal Cell, Female, Male, Middle Aged, Kidney, Adult, Aged, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Healthy Volunteers, Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted

Published Open-Access

yes

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