Specific computed tomography imaging characteristics of congenital mesoblastic nephroma and correlation with ultrasound and pathology

Summary Introduction Congenital mesoblastic nephroma (CMN) is a common solid renal tumor in the neonate. Congenital mesoblastic nephroma can be divided into classic, cellular, and mixed types. The prognosis of CMN is very optimistic. But CMN can easily be misdiagnosed as the other malignant renal tumors by radiology. However, no studies have described the computed tomography (CT) imaging appearance of CNM in detail. The objective of this study is retrospective analyses of the multislice CT characteristics of CMN and their corresponding ultrasound findings and pathology. Methods This retrospective study reviewed the enhanced CT images of the CMNs and other renal tumors in children younger than 1 year in the past 10 years from the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. Two radiologists had noted the CT imaging characteristics of these images. t -test and Fisher's exact test were used in the comparison of imaging characteristics between the CMNs and other renal tumors. Results and discussion Compared with other malignant renal tumors, the CMNs tend to appear as smaller round masses without clear coverage or clear boundary with the kidney in CT images ( P P P  > 0.05) between CMNs and other renal tumors. The appearances of CMN with classic components in the CT images are relevant to the pathological findings. The intratumor pelvis is caused by the classic components of CMN growing to encapsulate the pelvis. The double-layer sign in CT image correlates with the specific hypoechoic ring in ultrasound, which is caused by the slow blood flow and delay contrast agent filling in the blood sinus located in the peripheral part of the tumor. The differential diagnosis of CMN should include the other solitary renal tumors such as Wilms' tumor, clear-cell sarcoma of the kidney, and rhabdoid tumor of the kidney. Conclusion The unclear coverage and unclear boundary with the kidney, the intratumor pelvis, and double-layer sign after contrast were specific CT imaging characteristics of CMN. Download high-res image (313KB) Download full-size image Figure . Double-layer sign (arrow) (a) and intratumor pelvis (arrowhead) (b) can be seen in enhanced computed tomography (CT) image of the mixed CMN. The double-layer sign correlates with the blood sinus in pathology (hematoxylin and eosin staining, 200×) (c) and the hypoechoic ring in ultrasound (arrow) (d).