Glomerular filtration rate calculation based on ⁶⁸Ga-EDTA dynamic renal PET

Area of Science:

• Nuclear Medicine
• Renal Physiology
• Radiopharmaceutical Imaging

Background:

• Positron emission tomography (PET) offers superior quantification over SPECT for kidney function assessment.
• 68Ga-ethylenediamine-tetraacetic acid (68Ga-EDTA) is a novel PET tracer for renal imaging.
• Established methods for calculating glomerular filtration rate (GFR) using PET tracers are needed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the imaging performance of 68Ga-EDTA dynamic PET in healthy mice.
• To establish quantitative methods for GFR calculation using 68Ga-EDTA PET.
• To evaluate the feasibility of these methods in mice with kidney dysfunction.

Main Methods:

• Dynamic PET imaging of 68Ga-EDTA in C57BL/6 mice.
• Calculation of GFR using the integral method and the Patlak Plot method.
• Correlation of PET-derived GFR with blood clearance rates.

Main Results:

• Dynamic PET successfully visualized 68Ga-EDTA tracer elimination.
• Integral method yielded GFR of 253.80±40.11 μL/min; Patlak Plot method yielded 22.69±9.75 μL/min.
• PET-derived GFR correlated well with blood clearance (R²=0.7468, R²=0.8793), with the integral method showing higher accuracy.

Conclusions:

• Dynamic 68Ga-EDTA PET is effective for renal imaging and GFR measurement in mice.
• The integral method is more accurate than the Patlak Plot method for GFR calculation.
• The integral method demonstrates superior performance in assessing split renal function in kidney disease models.