Special MRI for Precise Images of Kidney

The high-powered scanner was able to trace the paths of tiny arteries and arterioles and show the subtle division between the kidney's cortex and medulla. The scanner can also clearly depict blood vessels, reducing the number of arteriograms. The researchers say this new tool will help urologists improve the certainty of kidney diagnosis and help direct the choice of therapy. The prototype system is small and can image only structures the same size as the human head or smaller. Scans of human heads show not only blood vessels but also structures within the gray and white matter.

"If we can draw a correlation between the images that we see using the 8-tesla magnet and the pathology of surgical specimens, we may be able to identify particular types of cancer, such as renal cell carcinoma, oncocytoma, and angiolipoma, or find metabolically active sites of malignancy,” said Dr. Robert W. Reagan, who presented the study at the 2001 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons in New Orleans (LA, USA). "The hope is that we will be able to tell patients we're 99% sure when they have a benign process or that we're 99.5% certain they have a malignancy.”




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