Repeatability of Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound to Determine Renal Cortical Perfusion

Alterations in renal perfusion play a major role in the pathogenesis of renal diseases. Renal contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is increasingly applied to quantify renal cortical perfusion and to assess its change over time, but comprehensive assessment of the technique's repeatability is lacking. Ten adults attended two renal CEUS scans within 14 days. In each session, five destruction/reperfusion sequences were captured. One-phase association was performed to derive the following parameters: acoustic index (AI), mean transit time (mTT), perfusion index (PI), and wash-in rate (WiR). Intra-individual and inter-operator (image analysis) repeatability for the perfusion variables were assessed using intra-class correlation (ICC), with the agreement assessed using a Bland-Altman analysis. The 10 adults had a median (IQR) age of 39 years (30-46). Good intra-individual repeatability was found for mTT (ICC: 0.71) and PI (ICC: 0.65). Lower repeatability was found for AI (ICC: 0.50) and WiR (ICC: 0.56). The correlation between the two operators was excellent for all variables: the ICCs were 0.99 for PI, 0.98 for AI, 0.87 for mTT, and 0.83 for WiR. The Bland-Altman analysis showed that the mean biases (+/- SD) between the two operators were 0.03 +/- 0.16 for mTT, 0.005 +/- 0.09 for PI, 0.04 +/- 0.19 for AI, and -0.02 +/- 0.11 for WiR.

Automated summary

Renal contrast-enhanced ultrasound can be used to quantify renal cortical perfusion and assess its change over time, with good intra-individual repeatability and inter-operator correlation. However, the repeatability for AI and WiR is lower.