Techniques for measuring renal transit time

A variety of techniques have been used for quantitative estimation of renal transit time. We compared different indices of transit time in a group of 30 patients having baseline and ACE inhibitor technetium-99m mercaptoacetyltriglycine (MAG3) renography prior to arteriography: peak time, mean transit time, and the ratio of background-subtracted counts at 20 min to those at 3 min. Each index was calculated from whole-kidney ROI, cortical ROI, and cortical factor (by factor analysis). The strongest correlations between angiographic percent of stenosis and transit time index were observed for the peak time (Spearman p=0.469, n=53, P <0.005) and for the R20/3 (again p=0.469, n=53, P <0.005) using the whole-kidney ROI and using only the baseline data without captopril. (Spearman's p is simply the correlation coefficient calculated from rank in list, which allows for nonlinear correlation.) Thus simple indices of transit time (whole-kidney peak time and R20/3) correlated as well with the observed pathology as did more complicated methods that required deconvolution, factor analysis, or selection of a cortical ROI.