Progress of MRI in evaluation of renal cell carcinoma

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common neoplasm arising from the kidney in adult patients. In recent years, varied functional MR imaging techniques, including diffusion-weighted and perfusion-weighted imaging, combined multi-parameter MRI analysis, and new image processing techniques such as radiomics, were proven valuable in the diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma. At present, researches are mainly focused on differentiating of benign and malignant tumors, subtype identification, staging, nuclear grade and prognosis evaluation of RCC. We reviewed the studies about the application of advanced MRI and image processing techniques in RCC. (authors)