A New Method for Kidney Rejection Detection

Acute rejection is the most important reason of graft failure after kidney transplantation, and early detection is crucial to survive the kidney function. Dynamic Contrast Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DCE-MRI) is an imaging modality where a contrast agent (such as Gd-DTPA) is introduced into the kidney and rapid and repeated images are taken, which allows both the anatomic and functional information of the kidney to be monitored. Using these images, this paper proposes a novel technique to create an enhanced image to be used in segmentation procedure rather than using the poor enhanced original MRI images. The proposed method increases the accuracy of active contour model in segmenting the Kidney cortex from surrounding structures even if with poor contour initialization. The segmented kidneys will used for the detection of kidney rejection by means of Contrast Enhanced Dynamic Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The mask is created from the segmented kidney and applied to all of the original image sequence and finally, the perfusion curves obtained from the cortex that show the transportation of the contrast agent into the tissue are given for future classification of normal and acute.