Assessing cortical cerebral microinfarcts on iron-sensitive MRI in cerebral small vessel disease
Publication year
2021Source
Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, 41, 12, (2021), pp. 3391-3399ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
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Organization
Neurology
PI Group MR Techniques in Brain Function
Neurophysics
aPI Group MR Structural Quantitative Imaging
Journal title
Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism
Volume
vol. 41
Issue
iss. 12
Page start
p. 3391
Page end
p. 3399
Subject
150 000 MR Techniques in Brain Function; 320 000 MR Structural Quantitative Imaging; Radboudumc 3: Disorders of movement DCMN: Donders Center for Medical Neuroscience; Neurology - Radboud University Medical CenterAbstract
Recent studies suggest that a subset of cortical microinfarcts may be identifiable on T2* but invisible on T1 and T2 follow-up images. We aimed to investigate whether cortical microinfarcts are associated with iron accumulation after the acute stage. The RUN DMC - InTENse study is a serial MRI study including individuals with cerebral small vessel disease (SVD). 54 Participants underwent 10 monthly 3 T MRIs, including diffusion-weighted imaging, quantitative R1 (=1/T1), R2 (=1/T2), and R2* (=1/T2*) mapping, from which MRI parameters within areas corresponding to microinfarcts and control region of interests (ROIs) were retrieved within 16 participants. Finally, we compared pre- and post-lesional values with repeated measures ANOVA and post-hoc paired t-tests using the mean difference between lesion and control ROI values. We observed 21 acute cortical microinfarcts in 7 of the 54 participants (median age 69 years [IQR 66-74], 63% male). R2* maps demonstrated an increase in R2* values at the moment of the last available follow-up MRI (median [IQR], 5 [5-14] weeks after infarction) relative to prelesional values (p = .08), indicative of iron accumulation. Our data suggest that cortical microinfarcts are associated with increased R2* values, indicative of iron accumulation, possibly due to microhemorrhages, neuroinflammation or neurodegeneration, awaiting histopathological verification.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [245284]
- Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging [4022]
- Electronic publications [132776]
- Faculty of Medical Sciences [93206]
- Faculty of Science [37523]
- Open Access publications [106326]
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