Correlation of the CT values of abdominal aorta,renal artery and renal cortex with its thickness on 64-MDCT contrast enhanced imagesCorrelation of the CT values of abdominal aorta,renal artery and renal cortex with its thickness on 64-MDCT contrast enhance

Objective:To investigate the correlation of abdominal aorta CT value,renal artery CT value and renal cortex thickness with renal cortex CT value on contrast enhanced 64-slice CT images.Methods:96patients(50 men and 46women;16~74years)with normal kidney function,which was confirmed by kidney function test were enrolled in this study,including bilateral kidneys of 92cases and unilateral kidney of 4cases(total of 188kidneys;92left,96right).After intravenous(IV)injection of contrast agent the kidneys of the selected patients were scanned by MDCT.The scans were performed in arterial,venous and 3min delayed phases.All statistical analyses were performed by using IBM SPSS 20.0.Graphs were generated using Graph Pad Prism 5software.Quantitative data were presented as mean±standard deviation,while qualitative data were presented as frequency(%).P<0.05was considered to be statistically significant.Results:The mean renal cortex thickness was(5.19±0.81)mm in all kidneys.In the arterial phase,a statistically significant positive correlation between renal cortex CT values and abdominal aortic CT values was showed(r=0.584;P<0.001).A statistically significant positive correlation between renal cortex CT values and renal cortex thickness was demonstrated(r=0.533,P<0.0001).Likewise,there was a positive correlation between renal cortex CT value and renal artery CT values(r=0.43,P<0.001).Conclusion:It is a promising approach to assess the individual kidney function by measuring abdominal aorta CT value,renal artery CT value,renal cortex CT value and renal cortex thickness using contrast MDCT.