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Open Imaging Index
X-ray (computed radiography) CT MRI Kidney

TCGA-KIRC

The Cancer Genome Atlas Kidney Renal Clear Cell Carcinoma Collection

CT and MRI before surgery of patients with clear cell kidney cancer whose tumors were profiled by The Cancer Genome Atlas, so imaging can be linked to genomics and outcome. 267 patients from seven US centers.

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Overview

TCGA-KIRC is the radiology part of The Cancer Genome Atlas project on kidney renal clear cell carcinoma, hosted by The Cancer Imaging Archive. Its patient IDs are identical to those in the NCI Genomic Data Commons, which holds the clinical, genomic and histopathology data of the same patients. This link lets researchers relate imaging features of the tumor to its genotype and to patient outcome. TCIA released the first series in 2012, and the current version 3 dates from May 2020.

Composition

The collection holds 267 patients with 439 imaging studies, 2,654 DICOM series and 192,581 images, about 92 GB in total. CT dominates: 237 patients have CT, 62 have MRI and one has radiographs. Of these, 32 patients have both CT and MRI. The DICOM headers list 178 patients as male and 89 as female. For each case, the baseline studies were taken before surgery. A snapshot of the TCGA clinical data and the case report forms that explain it can be downloaded from the collection page.

Acquisition

Seven US institutions contributed images, among them Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute. Scans come from routine clinical care, not from a research protocol, so scanners and parameters vary widely. GE scanners appear for 212 patients and Siemens for 62, with a few Philips and Toshiba systems. Dates in the DICOM headers are shifted back by a random offset per site, which keeps the intervals between a patient's studies intact.

Annotations

The collection itself contains no image labels. Tumor annotations and radiogenomic features made by other groups are published as separate TCIA analysis results, such as TCGA-KIRC-Radiogenomics.

Known limitations

  • Protocols, contrast phases and scanners differ between sites and patients, and no acquisition details are curated.
  • Only 62 patients have MRI, so most work uses the CT subset.
  • TCIA and TCGA handle dates differently, so imaging dates cannot be aligned directly with clinical event dates.
  • The modality, vendor and sex counts here were counted from the public TCIA metadata API, not from a publication.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 267 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 89 33%
  • Male 178 67%

PatientSex in TCIA public NBIA API, patient list of TCGA-KIRC (open, no login), counted per PatientSex

Scanner vendor

  • GE HealthCare 212 79%
  • Siemens Healthineers 62 23%
  • Philips 12 4%
  • Canon Medical 2 <1%

Manufacturer; PatientID in TCIA public NBIA API, series list of TCGA-KIRC (open, no login, CC BY 3.0), counted per PatientID, Modality, StudyInstanceUID and Manufacturer

Modality

  • CT 237 89%
  • MRI 62 23%
  • X-ray (computed radiography) 1 <1%

Modality; PatientID in TCIA public NBIA API, series list of TCGA-KIRC (open, no login, CC BY 3.0), counted per PatientID, Modality, StudyInstanceUID and Manufacturer

License and access

Our reading of the license, not legal advice. Before you use the data, read the original license and confirm that your use is allowed. We take no responsibility for how you use a dataset. Full disclaimer

Access
Open download

Download without an account

Images download with the TCIA Data Retriever. Clinical, genomic and histopathology data for the same patient IDs are held in the NCI Genomic Data Commons.

Access page

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Older version of CC BY. Use, share and adapt the data for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you credit the creators.

Original license text Version read: 3.0 Checked 2026-10-07

What you can do

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you can share

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you must do

  • Yes
  • Share alike No
  • No
  • No
  • Manuscript review No
  • Release code No
  • Return results No
  • Delete after use No

Limits

  • No
  • Location limits No

Citation

Akin O, Elnajjar P, Heller M, Jarosz R, Erickson BJ, Kirk S, Lee Y, Linehan MW, Gautam R, Vikram R, Garcia KM, Roche C, Bonaccio E, Filippini J. (2016). The Cancer Genome Atlas Kidney Renal Clear Cell Carcinoma Collection (TCGA-KIRC) (Version 3) [Data set]. The Cancer Imaging Archive. https://doi.org/10.7937/K9/TCIA.2016.V6PBVTDR

Sources

Every number on this page comes from one of these documents. Each chart names the table or page it is taken from. The raw numbers are in stats.csv.