Contemporary and Emerging MRI Strategies for Assessing Kidney Allograft Complications: Arterial Stenosis and Parenchymal Injury, From the AJR Special Series on Imaging of Fibrosis.

Abstract

MRI plays an important role in the evaluation of kidney allografts for vascular complications as well as parenchymal insults. Transplant renal artery stenosis (TRAS), the most common vascular complication of kidney transplantation, can be evaluated by MRA using gadolinium and non-gadolinium contrast agents, as well as by unenhanced MRA techniques. Parenchymal injury occurs through a variety of pathways, including graft rejection, acute tubular injury, BK viral infection, drug-induced interstitial nephritis, and pyelonephritis. Investigational MRI techniques have sought to differentiate among these causes of dysfunction as well as to assess the degree of interstitial fibrosis or tubular atrophy (IFTA)-the common end pathway for all of these processes-which is currently evaluated by invasively obtained core biopsies. Some of these MRI sequences have shown promise in not only assessing the cause of parenchymal injury but also assessing IFTA noninvasively. This review describes current clinically used MRI techniques, and previews promising investigational MRI techniques, for assessing complications of kidney grafts.