MEASURING THE CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID TEMPERATURE USING DIFFUSION MRI

Introduction: Hypothermia is often induced in patients after stroke, cardiac arrest or traumatic brain injury in order to minimize the damage to the neuronal tissue. During the hypothermic period the body temperature is usually measured external to the brain, giving only indirect evidence of the actual temperature of the brain. The diffusion constant of water is temperature dependent with a well known one-to-one relationship. The aim of this use diffusion-weighted MRI to measure the diffusion constant within the lateral ventricles of the brain and investigate how reliably this value yielded a temperature estimate.