Evaluation of experimental early acute cerebral ischemia before the development of edema: use of dynamic, contrast‐enhanced and diffusion‐weighted mr scanning

Abstract
The ability of dynamic, contrast‐enhanced, magnetic susceptibility‐weighted scanning to delineate early experimental acute cerebral infarction was compared with that of heavily T2‐weighted and diffusion‐weighted spin echo scanning. Spontaneously hypertensive rats, which had undergone right middle cerebral artery occlusion, were studied from 15 min to 3 h post ligation on a 1.5‐T clinical whole‐body imager. In contrast to the diffusion‐ and T2‐weighted spin echo scans, the dynamic, contrast‐enhanced technique clearly and consistently delineated the nonperfused regions as early as I5 min post ligation.