ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this work was to determine the minimum administered activity of (99m)Tc-mercaptoacetyltriglycine (MAG3) needed both to estimate effective renal plasma flow (ERPF) with adequate precision and to obtain good image quality. METHODS: Three groups of 10 patients each were injected with 45, 71, or 132 MBq of MAG3. Renograms and perfusion and clearance images were obtained. The age, sex, and weight of the patients; the labeling yield; the mean count and counting rate 2 min after injection; the kidney-to-background and cortex-to-background ratios; the uptake time from the renograms; the percentage of the injected activity 2 min after injection in the left and right kidneys (A2(LK) and A2(RK), respectively); and the ERPF for both kidneys were obtained and analyzed. Discriminant analysis of image quality was used to select the variables that most affected image quality. The selected variables were studied among activity groups to optimize the amount of activity administered in these studies. RESULTS: Precision in ERPF assessment did not significantly differ among administered activity levels (P = 0.824). The SDs of the ERPF were +/-1.5 for 132 MBq, +/-1.7 for 71 MBq, and +/-2.0 for 45 MBq. The labeling yield, the ratios of counts in the left and right kidneys to the background and in the left and right cortices to the background, and A2(LK) and A2(RK) were the only variables that provided a significant discriminant function for image quality. The only variable that significantly differed with the variation in administered activity was the ratio of counts in the right kidney to the background (P = 0.026), most likely because of the labeling yield. CONCLUSION: A 45-MBq activity is sufficient to guarantee good image quality and adequate precision in ERPF determination from the time-activity curve, provided the labeling yield is kept high.
