High-speed MR imaging of ischemic brain injury following stenosis of the middle cerebral artery.
Magnetic susceptibility contrast-enhanced and diffusion-weighted echo planar magnetic resonance (MR) imaging was performed using a cat model of acute regional cerebral ischemia induced by partial stenosis of the right middle cerebral artery (MCA). The imaging data were correlated with triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC)-stained histopathologic coronal brain sections to determine the prognostic efficacy of high-speed MR imaging techniques in differentiating mild, moderate, and severe cerebral hypoperfusion. Brains of animals without cortical injury on TTC staining were found to have a reduction in peak contrast enhancement of 32 +/- 6% (mean +/- SD) below control values with no significant change in the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), determined from the diffusion-weighted MR images. In cases where moderate ischemic injury was observed in the TTC-stained sections, a 10-20% drop in the ADC was found over the 6-h study period, accompanied by a much wider variation in peak contrast enhancement. Finally, where TTC staining showed severe ischemic brain damage, a 40-50% drop in ADC and a reduction in peak contrast enhancement effect of > 95% were observed as early as 1 h following MCA stenosis. The significant correlation between imaging observations and histologically confirmed cerebral ischemia indicates that magnetic susceptibility contrast-enhanced echo planar MR imaging is sensitive to slight reductions in cerebral perfusion that fall below the threshold for reliably detectable ischemia-induced alterations in ADC. First-pass perfusion-sensitive imaging may thus be diagnostically useful in differentiating severely hypoperfused permanently injured tissue from the mildly hypoperfused ischemic penumbra.
Roberts
T P
TP
Department of Radiology, University of California at San Francisco 94143.
Vexler
Z
Z
Derugin
N
N
Moseley
M E
ME
Kucharczyk
J
J
D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D002415:Cats; D002536:Cerebral Arteries; D003251:Constriction, Pathologic; D004058:Diffusion; D002546:Ischemic Attack, Transient / Q000473:pathology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D011379:Prognosis; D013194:Staining and Labeling; D013778:Tetrazolium Salts; D013997:Time Factors
D013778:Tetrazolium Salts; C009591:triphenyltetrazolium