Quantitation of the in vivo kidney volume with cine computed tomography

The authors examined the utility of cine computerized tomography (CT) for noninvasive determination of whole kidney, cortical, and medullary volumes. The right kidneys of 14 anesthetized dogs were scanned after an intravenous bolus injection of iohexol, and their volumes determined after boundary identification. After the scans, the kidneys were excised at postmortem examination and their volumes determined by fluid displacement. The mean (+/- standard error of the mean [SEM]) postmortem and in vivo renal volumes were 66.1 +/- 2.2 cc and 78.2 +/- 2.4 cc, respectively (r = 0.86; P less than 0.001). The difference was consistent with the blood, filtrate, and urine contents of the in vivo kidney. The in vivo cortical and medullary volumes correlated poorly with their postmortem volumes because of difficulties in boundary definition. These results demonstrate the feasibility for fast and reliable in vivo whole kidney volume quantitation by cine CT.