Synthetic Arterial Spin Labeling MRI of the Kidneys for Evaluation of Data Processing Pipeline

Accurate quantification of perfusion is crucial for diagnosis and monitoring of kidney function. Arterial spin labeling (ASL), a completely non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging technique, is a promising method for this application. However, differences in acquisition (e.g., ASL parameters, readout) and processing (e.g., registration, segmentation) between studies impede the comparison of results. To alleviate challenges arising solely from differences in processing pipelines, synthetic data are of great value. In this work, synthetic renal ASL data were generated using body models from the XCAT phantom and perfusion was added using the general kinetic model. Our in-house developed processing pipeline was then evaluated in terms of registration, quantification, and segmentation using the synthetic data. Registration performance was evaluated qualitatively with line profiles and quantitatively with mean structural similarity index measures (MSSIMs). Perfusion values obtained from the pipeline were compared to the values assumed when generating the synthetic data. Segmentation masks obtained by semi-automated procedure of the processing pipeline were compared to the original XCAT organ masks using the Dice index. Overall, the pipeline evaluation yielded good results. After registration, line profiles were smoother and, on average, MSSIMs increased by 25%. Mean perfusion values for cortex and medulla were close to the assumed perfusion of 250 mL/100 g/min and 50 mL/100 g/min, respectively. Dice indices ranged 0.80–0.93, 0.78–0.89, and 0.64–0.84 for whole kidney, cortex, and medulla, respectively. The generation of synthetic ASL data allows flexible choice of parameters and the generated data are well suited for evaluation of processing pipelines.