Noninvasive Assessment of Acute Kidney Injury with Diffusion Weighted MR Imaging: A Prospective Study

Jian Dong¹, Li Yang², Tao Su², Xiaoying Wang¹, Xuexiang Jiang¹

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a frequent event, with the incidence of more than 5000 for non-dialysis therapy and 295 for dialysis treatment per million people per year.Diffusion-weighted (DW) MR is a functional imaging technique providing quantitative parameters of diffusion and microcirculation in tissues based on the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC).This study is to investigate the feasibility of DW MR imaging in the diagnosis and therapeutic effect of AKI.The results of our study show DW MR imaging can help detect the differences in the AKI kidney.DW MR imaging is a feasible imaging tool to depict early alterations in AKI, with a potential capability to reflect prognosis.