Abstract #4115

DTI of Human Kidney at 3T - Simultaneous and Reliable Determination of Fractional Anisotropy, ADC and Perfusion Fraction

Tobias Binser¹, Harriet C. Thoeny², Chris Boesch¹, Peter Vermathen¹

¹Dept. of Clinical Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; ²Dept. of Radiology, Inselspital Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to reliably determine the fractional anisotropy (FA), apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and perfusion fraction (F_P) in human kidney at 3T. Therefore 13 volunteers were investigated with single-shot echo-planar imaging applying ten different b-values in 6 non-collinear directions. The diffusion parameters exhibit only little standard deviations and agree with literature. ADC and F_P match well with results obtained by diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). The findings suggest that DTI is capable to provide direction-dependent information like FA in addition to ADC and F_P without major drawbacks compared to DWI.