Establishing a New Ultrasound Technique to Improve Assessment of Chronic Kidney Disease.

Blood flow to the kidneys is important in the development of kidney diseases. Currently we do not have ways of measuring and monitoring kidney blood flow for patients in real-time. This is a major barrier to investigation and management of acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Kidney blood flow can be reliably measured using a specialised type of MRI scan, but this is expensive and difficult to do in people who are unwell. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is a new technique, which uses a contrast containing microbubbles to measure blood flow. The benefits of this method are that it is relatively inexpensive, the contrast agents are not kidney-damaging and it can be done at the bedside. We want to compare contrast enhanced ultrasound against the current best-measure of kidney blood flow, to see if it is giving accurate information about kidney blood flow. We will do this by doing both MRI and contrast enhanced ultrasound scans in people with chronic kidney disease and comparing the results.