• Alastair J Rankin, Sarah Allwood-Spiers, LeeMatthew M YMMYRoom 311, Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, BHF Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre, University of Glasgow, 126 University Place, Glasgow, G12 8TA, UK., Luke Zhu, Rosemary Woodward, Bernd Kuehn, Aleksandra Radjenovic, Naveed Sattar, Giles Roditi, Patrick B Mark, and Keith A Gillis.
• Room 311, Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, BHF Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre, University of Glasgow, 126 University Place, Glasgow, G12 8TA, UK. alastair.rankin@nhs.net.
• MAGMA. 2020 Feb 1; 33 (1): 103-112.

ObjectiveTo assess interobserver reproducibility of different regions of interest (ROIs) on multi-parametric renal MRI using commercially available software.Materials And MethodsHealthy volunteers (HV), patients with heart failure (HF) and renal transplant recipients (Tx) were recruited. Localiser scans, T1 mapping and pseudo-continuous arterial spin labelling (pCASL) were performed. HV and Tx also underwent diffusion-weighted imaging to allow calculation of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC). For T1, pCASL and ADC, ROIs were drawn for whole kidney (WK), cortex (Cx), user-defined representative cortex (rep-Cx) and medulla. Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and coefficient of variation (CoV) were assessed.ResultsForty participants were included (10 HV, 10 HF and 20 Tx). The ICC for renal volume was 0.97 and CoV 6.5%. For T1 and ADC, WK, Cx, and rep-Cx were highly reproducible with ICC ≥ 0.76 and CoV < 5%. However, cortical pCASL results were more variable (ICC > 0.86, but CoV up to 14.2%). While reproducible, WK values were derived from a wide spread of data (ROI standard deviation 17% to 55% of the mean value for ADC and pCASL, respectively). Renal volume differed between groups (p < 0.001), while mean cortical T1 values were greater in Tx compared to HV (p = 0.009) and HF (p = 0.02). Medullary T1 values were also higher in Tx than HV (p = 0.03), while medullary pCASL values were significantly lower in Tx compared to HV and HF (p = 0.03 for both).DiscussionKidney volume calculated by manually contouring a localiser scan was highly reproducible between observers and detected significant differences across patient groups. For T1, pCASL and ADC, Cx and rep-Cx ROIs are generally reproducible with advantages over WK values.

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