Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) & Tractography for Assessment of Renal Allograft Dysfunction

Katja Hueper¹, Marcel Gutberlet¹, Dagmar Hartung¹, Frank Lehner², Wilfried Gwinner³, Xiaoqi Ding⁴, Michael Galanski

We investigated whether DTI allows for non-invasive detection of functional and structural changes of renal transplants. 15 kidney transplanted patients with different degrees of allograft dysfunction and 13 healthy volunteers were examined using a fat-saturated echo-planar DTI-sequence (1.5 T MAGNETOM Avanto, 6 diffusion directions, b=0,600 s/mm). FA- and ADC-values in the cortex and in the medulla were determined. In transplants FA and ADC were significantly lower in the medulla and in the cortex compared to healthy volunteers. The FA in the medulla correlated with the estimated GFR, thus demonstrating the potential value of DTI in early detecting allograft dysfunction.