Assessment of Renal Physiology Using Functional MRI

Sammanfattning: Kidney injury is a major cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world, leading to substantial individual suffering and to a heavy financial burden for the society. A large number of common conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, autoimmune diseases and infections are highly associated with kidney injury. Disturbances in renal perfusion and oxygenation are believed to be involved in the pathogenesis of kidney injury and are therefore of interest to investigate closely. Studies to further the understanding of kidney injury have previously most often involved invasive procedures or ionizing radiation which have limited studies in humans due to ethical reasons. Hence there is a need to explore and implement noninvasive, nonionizing techniques to carry out human studies of renal physiology in health and disease. This thesis aimed to do so using a number of novel, noninvasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. In the first study of this thesis, we scanned the kidneys of healthy volunteers with noninvasive MRI and found significant differences between the renal cortex, inner and outer medulla regarding blood flow, oxygenation, water diffusion and tissue characteristics. In the second study we scanned the kidneys with MRI and collected urine from healthy volunteers every fourth hour for 24 hours and found circadian variations for total renal blood flow as well as for a number of urinary parameters. Renal oxygenation was stable with only small diurnal variations. In the third study we implemented the MRI techniques used in study 1 and 2 and one additional MRI technique in COVID-19 patients admitted to the intensive care unit for severe respiratory failure, with and without acute kidney injury (AKI). We found significantly reduced total renal blood flow as well as  cortical and medullary perfusion in patients with AKI compared to patients without AKI. No significant difference was found between the two groups regarding renal oxygenation, water diffusion or tissue characteristics. In the fourth study we used the same MRI techniques as in study 3 to follow up patients previously treated for severe COVID-19 without and with different degrees of AKI. We found significantly reduced apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and total renal blood flow in patients that had high grade AKI compared to patients that did not have AKI during hospitalization for COVID-19. No significant difference regarding oxygenation was found between the groups.In conclusion, this thesis shows that it is possible to use multiparametric noninvasive MRI for renal studies in clinical practice.