Demonstration of acute ischemic lesions in the fetal brain by diffusion magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract
The possibility of detecting acute hypoxic‐ischemic brain lesions by prenatal magnetic resonance imaging or ultrasound is low. We present a case of a fetus with a vein of Galen arteriovenous malformation in whom prenatal diffusion‐weighted magnetic resonance imaging at 33 weeks of gestation clearly detected cerebral acute ischemic lesions, associated with remarkable decrease of the average apparent diffusion coefficient, whereas T2‐weighted imaging was still not informative.