Purpose: To investigate the possibility of iodine quantification during a single nephrographic phase in characterizing renal cell carcinoma (RCC) subtypes and if there is a difference between areal and volumetric iodine quantification methods.
Materials and methods: This retrospective study included 110 patients with 113 histopathologically confirmed RCCs scanned by dual-energy CT at the nephrographic phase before surgeries. For each lesion, an areal measurement of the iodine concentration with maximum enhancement (I max enhan) and the iodine concentration with maximum area among slices (I max area), as well as a volumetric iodine concentration of the whole-tumor (I volume), were evaluated by two independent radiologists. The diagnostic performances in a single nephrographic phase for characterizing RCC subtypes were evaluated, and three iodine quantification methods were compared with each other.
Results: There were significant differences (clear cell vs. papillary and clear cell vs. chromophobe RCC) and no significant differences (papillary vs. chromophobe RCC) at the nephrographic phase in all three methods. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) derived from the I max enhan for discriminating clear cell from papillary RCC was significantly higher than that derived from the I max area (P = 0.0357) and the I volume (P = 0.0206), and no significant differences existed among the three methods in distinguishing clear cell RCC from chromophobe RCC. The reliability of all three parameters was very high with an interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) exceeding 0.8.
Conclusions: Iodine quantification in a single nephrographic phase can be used to differentiate RCC subtypes preoperatively, and the areal maximum enhancement iodine quantification would probably be the most appropriate approach.
Keywords: Diagnosis; Iodine quantification; Kidney neoplasms; Tomography; X-ray computed.