[Visualization of the renal venous system by renal arteriography with digital subtraction angiography]

The purpose of this study was to obtain vivid and precise images of intrarenal venous branching using DSA for renal arteriography. The type of system used was an ADAC DPS-4100C with 70-80 kVp, and 320 mA, 25-50 msec at 6 frames/sec. The duration was 10 sec and the matrix size was 512 X 512. In order to retain clear subtracted images of intrarenal venous branching with minimal noise the three frames were selected on the time-density curve of DSA: 1) a frame on which renal arteries disappear (frame X), 2) the frame with highest renal venous density value as (frame Y), 3) the difference of the nephrogram density between X and Y frames in which only the density of the nephrogram decreases (frame Z). The mask image is the image subtracted by the equation of the weighted averaging method on X and Z frame and is subtracted from the image of Y frame in the final step. By this method, 40 kidneys in 36 patients were studied, and the intrarenal venous branches up to the interlobar vein was clearly demonstrated in 28 of these cases (70%). This method is useful to estimate the extent of intrarenal lesions and detect abnormal renal blood flow compared with conventional temporal subtraction method.