Frank G. Zoellner1, Holger Best1,
Simon Konstandin1, Stefan Haneder2, Stefan O.
Schoenberg2, Henrik J. Michaely2, Lothar R. Schad1
1Computer Assisted Clinical
Medicine, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany; 2Institute of
Clinical Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, University Medical Center
Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany
One main purpose of the human kidneys is the maintenance and the regulation of the fluid and electrolyte homeostasis. About 80% of the filtrated substances are sodium. The combination of relative low in-vivo concentration and MR sensitivity of 23Na compared to 1H results in relative low MR signal. A logical step forward is to enhance the images by applying post-processing filters. We compared the performance of different filters in sodium imaging of the human kidney at 3T. SNR before and after filtering sodium images obtain in 4 healthy volunteers is improved by a factor of 3.6 for the Fermi, 3.2 for the Hamming and 3.2 for the Gaussian filter.
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