Incorporating ADC Temporal Profiles in Acute Stroke to Predict Ischemic Tissue Fate

Virendra R. Desai¹, Qiang Shen¹, Timothy Q. Duong¹

Acute diffusion data has been used to predict ischemic tissue fate on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Previous predictions however were made based on acute MRI data from a single time point. This study proposes a novel approach to incorporate the temporal characteristics of acute ADC (apparent diffusion coefficient) changes to characterize tissue fate based on a pixel-by-pixel basis. This approach was tested on rat stroke models subjected to permanent and 60-min middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). We concluded that there were distinct temporal patterns that determined tissue salvageability.