Three Dimensional Glomerular Reconstruction: A Novel Approach to Evaluate Renal Microanatomy in Diabetic Kidney Disease

Abstract

Mesangial metrics reflect glomerular filtration surface area in diabetes. The point-sampled intercept (PSI) method is the conventional method to calculate these parameters. However, this is time consuming and subject to underestimation. We introduce a novel three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction method applicable to light microscopy to measure mesangial metrics. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), PSI and our new 3D imaging methods were used to quantify mesangial metrics from 22 patients with type 2 diabetes, normo-, micro- and macroalbuminuria and an estimated glomerular filtration rate of <60 mL/min/1.73 m2. Repeated-measures ANOVA test was used to test the equality of the measurement m..