Cerebral blood flow index image as a simple indicator for the fate of acute ischemic lesion

Summary Background and purpose. To evaluate the feasibility of utilizing cerebralbloodflow (CBF) indeximages,weattempted to investigate I) whether CBF indeximagescan reveal the resulting infracted area, 2)whetherthe CBF indexcan correlate othermodality (SPECT). Methods. DWI and DPI were obtained in 17 patients within 12 hours of stroke onset and follow up MRI. On three DPI delivered images, namely relative regional cerebral blood volume (rrCBV), uncorrected meantransit time(MTTu) and CBF indeximages, correlations betweeninitial lesion volume of and follow up infarction volume of three images and rCBF images delivered with singular value decomposition (SVD) methods were assessed. Then 99ffiTc_ ECD SPECT wastakenimmediatelyafter MRI to correlate to MRI data. Results. Among the three images, lesion volume of CBF index images against followup infarct volumehad the highest correlation (r = 0.995)to a linear fit and the slope was closestto \,0 (0.91)and had identical accuracy to the regressioncoefficient of rCBF images. CBF indexwellcorrelated to SPECT delivered CBF. Conclusion. CBF indeximagescanaccuratelypredict final infarct volume. EvaluatingCBF index imagestogether withDWI can guide the initial assessment in the acute stageofcerebral ischemia.