Renal advances in ultrasound elasticity imaging: measuring the compliance of arteries and kidneys in end-stage renal disease.

Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. weitzel@umich.edu

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Ultrasound elasticity imaging visually represents tissue hardness measurements using high-resolution ultrasound speckle-tracking algorithms. This method has recently been applied in the renal setting to measure arterial compliance in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and the mechanical properties of transplant kidneys in vivo. METHODS: Ultrasound radio-frequency signal measurements were made of the brachial artery in 5 ESRD subjects and 5 healthy controls and renal transplant measurements in 2 subjects, 1 with chronic allograft nephropathy (CAN) and 1 with normal graft function. RESULTS: Maximal brachial artery percent strain measurements for healthy controls were 32.9 +/- 10.2% (mean +/- SD) and for ESRD subjects maximal percent strains were 4.9 +/- 1.8%. Transplant renal cortical strain for the subject with CAN was approximately one third that of the healthy transplant recipient. CONCLUSION: Ultrasound elasticity imaging offers the potential to noninvasively measure the mechanical properties of structures within the body. Copyright 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel.

PMID: 15627731 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]