Rebecca E. Thornhill1,2, Shuo Chen1, Wael Rammo1, David J. Mikulis1,3, Andrea Kassner1,2
1Medical Imaging, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 2Physiology and Experimental Medicine, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 3Medical Imaging, Toronto Western Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The use of thrombolysis is known to increase the risk of hemorrhagic transformation (HT) in acute ischemic stroke (AIS). What is needed for successful treatment guidance is a method for predicting HT. An alternative to DCE-MRI and subsequent permeability estimation is a model-free approach to measure T2* contrast recirculation abnormalities associated with permeability. The purpose of this study was to compare four different T2* measures in AIS (relative recirculation (rR), Peak Height, %Recovery, and Slope). Only rR and %Recovery were significantly different in HT patients, suggesting that the measurement of either metric could have the potential to predict HT.