Mike Notohamiprodjo1, Michael Pedersen2,
Christian Glaser3, Andreas D. Helck, Klaus-Peter Lodemann4,
Bente Jespersen5, Michael Fischereder6, Maximilian F.
Reiser, Steven P. Sourbron7
1Department of Clinical
Radiology, University Hospitals Munich, Munich, Bavaria, Germany; 2MR
Research Centre, Aarhus University Hospital; 3Department of Radiology,
NYU Langone Medical Center; 4Bracco Imaging Germany; 5Department
of Nephrology, Aarhus University Hospital; 6Department of
Nephrology, University Hospitals Munich; 7Division of Medical
Physics, University of Leeds
Protein binding of MR contrast agents may cause a systematic error in perfusion- and filtration parameters measured with MR-Renography. The purpose of this study was to measure the magnitude of this error using a dual-agent protocol in a pig model. The findings of the performed experiments show that perfusion parameters of both agents are comparable, whereas GFR is underestimated with Gd-BOPTA due to the dependence of relaxivity on protein content. Hence GFR cannot be measured with protein-bound contrast agents, but the proposed dual-agent protocol may produce new functional indices measuring protein filtration.