A New Radiologic Technique for Acute Stroke Imaging

If validated, quantitation of net water uptake on CT imaging could help identify time of stroke onset when timing is unknown.

For patients with stroke symptoms noted upon awakening (“wake-up stroke”) or those with stroke of unknown time of onset, determining if brain tissue is still viable is challenging. One technique that has been tested in a clinical trial is diffusion/fluid-attenuate immersion recovery (FLAIR) mismatch, in which presence of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) diffusion lesion and absence of signal change on the MRI FLAIR sequence suggest the stroke is <4.5 hours old. Now, researchers have investigated a CT-based technique, quantitative net water uptake (NWU), and compared it with diffusion/FLAIR mismatch.

The authors initially studied 50 patients (median age, 63 years; 40% women) with known stroke onset between 0.5 and 8 hours before imaging (me…

Reviewing Author

Seemant Chaturvedi, MD

Disclosures

Consultant/Advisory BoardBayer Pharmaceuticals; Novartis

Grant/Research SupportNational Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Editorial BoardsNeurology; Stroke

Seemant Chaturvedi, MD

Disclosures

Consultant/Advisory BoardBayer Pharmaceuticals; Novartis

Grant/Research SupportNational Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Editorial BoardsNeurology; Stroke

A New Radiologic Technique for Acute Stroke Imaging

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Reviewing Author