Acute kidney injury (AKI) leads to unacceptably high mortality due to difficulties in timely intervention and less efficient renal delivery of therapeutic drugs. Here, a series of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-curcumin nanoparticles (PCurNP) are designed to meet the renal excretion threshold (similar to 45 kDa), presenting a controllable delivery nanosystem for kidney targeting. Renal accumulation of the relatively small nanoparticles, Zr-89-PCurNP M10 with the diameter between 5 and 8 nm, is found to be 1.7 times and 1.8 times higher than the accumulation of Zr-89-PCurNP M29 (20-50 nm) and M40 (20-50 nm) as revealed by PET imaging. Furthermore, serum creatinine analysis, kidney tissues histology, and tubular injury scores revealed that PCurNP M10 efficiently treated cisplatin-induced AKI. Herein, PCurNP offers a novel and simple strategy for precise PET image-guided drug delivery of renal protective materials.