Recommendations for Preclinical Renal MRI: A Comprehensive Open-Access Protocol Collection
to Improve Training, Reproducibility, and Comparability of Studies
Renal MRI holds incredible promise for making a quantum leap in improving diagnosis
and care of patients with a multitude of diseases, by moving beyond the limitations
and restrictions of current routine clinical practice. Clinical and preclinical renal
MRI is advancing with ever increasing rapidity, and yet, aside from a few examples
of renal MRI in routine use, it is still not good enough. Several roadblocks are still
delaying the pace of progress, particularly inefficient education of renal MR researchers,
and lack of harmonization of approaches that limits the sharing of results among multiple
research groups.Here we aim to address these limitations for preclinical renal MRI
(predominantly in small animals), by providing a comprehensive collection of more
than 40 publications that will serve as a foundational resource for preclinical renal
MRI studies. This includes chapters describing the fundamental principles underlying
a variety of renal MRI methods, step-by-step protocols for executing renal MRI studies,
and detailed guides for data analysis. This collection will serve as a crucial part
of a roadmap toward conducting renal MRI studies in a robust and reproducible way,
that will promote the standardization and sharing of data.This chapter is based upon
work from the COST Action PARENCHIMA, a community-driven network funded by the European
Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) program of the European Union, which
aims to improve the reproducibility and standardization of renal MRI biomarkers.