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March 28, 2026Open Access

Diagnostic performance of mDIXON-Quant imaging in assessing glomerulosclerosis severity for chronic kidney disease: a comparative study of R2* and fat fraction parameters

Key Points

This research aims to evaluate the diagnostic performance of mDIXON-Quant imaging in assessing glomerulosclerosis severity between healthy volunteers and CKD patients.
Conducted MRI using mDIXON-Quant on 42 CKD patients and 25 healthy volunteers.
Stratified CKD patients based on glomerulosclerosis severity via renal biopsy.
Applied two region-of-interest measurement methods: cortex/medulla separation and whole-kidney contour tracing.
Analyzed R2* and fat fraction parameters using ANOVA and DeLong tests.
R2* parameters showed significant differences across groups, correlating with glomerulosclerosis severity.
Combining fat fraction with R2* improved diagnostic efficacy for distinguishing low and high glomerulosclerosis.
Method 2 (whole-kidney contour tracing) had an AUC of 0.9, effectively differentiating high glomerulosclerosis from healthy controls.

Abstract

To compare two region-of-interest (ROI) measurement methods based on mDIXON-Quant for distinguishing healthy volunteers (HV), chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients with low (≤ 15%) and high (> 15%) glomerulosclerosis (GS), and establish a non-invasive auxiliary protocol. A total of 42 CKD patients and 25 HV underwent mDIXON-Quant MRI. CKD patients were stratified into low (n = 24) and high (n = 18) GS groups via renal biopsy. Two ROI methods were applied: Method 1 (cortex/medulla separation, 15–20 mm² circular ROIs at renal hilum, upper/lower poles) and Method 2 (whole-kidney contour tracing). R2* and fat fraction (FF) parameters were analyzed using ANOVA, LSD tests, and DeLong tests for diagnostic efficacy (AUC). R2* parameters (RcR2*, RR2*) showed significant differences across groups (P 0.05). RcR2* outperformed medullary parameters (P < 0.05). The present study demonstrates that employing the Method 2(whole-kidney contour tracing) based on mDIXON-Quant technology enables auxiliary quantitative assessment of the severity of GS via the R2 parameter of the right kidney, thereby confirming its role as an adjunctive tool in GS evaluation.

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Wang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69c7725e8bbfbc51511e2c5e https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1186/s12880-026-02259-6

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