No abstract

Purpose Admission infarct core lesion size is an important determinant of management and outcome in acute (<9 hrs) stroke. Our purpose was to: (1) determine the optimal CT perfusion (CTP) parameter to define infarct core using various post-processing platforms, and (2) establish the degree of variability in threshold values between these different platforms. Methods We evaluated 48 consecutive cases with vessel occlusion and admission CTP and DWI within 3 hours of each other. CTP was acquired with a “second-generation” 66-second biphasic cine protocol, and post-processed using “standard” (from two vendors, “A-std” and “B-std”) and “delay-corrected” (from one vendor, “A-dc”) commercial software. ROC curve analysis was performed comparing each CTP parameter - both absolute and normalized to the contralateral uninvolved hemisphere - between infarcted and non-infarcted regions, as defined by co-registered DWI. Results Cerebral blood flow (CBF) had the highest accuracy (ROC “area under curve”, AUC), for all three platforms (p<0.01). The maximal AUC's for each parameter were: absolute CBF 0.88, CBV 0.81, and MTT 0.82, and relative CBF 0.88, CBV 0.83, and MTT 0.82. Optimal ROC operating point thresholds varied significantly between different platforms (Friedman test, p<0.01). Conclusion Admission absolute and normalized “second-generation” cine acquired CT-CBF lesion volumes correlate more closely with DWI defined infarct core than do those of CT-CBV or MTT. Although limited availability of DWI for some patients creates impetus to develop alternative methods of estimating core, the marked variability in quantification amongst different post-processing software limits generalizability of parameter map thresholds between platforms.

Background and Purpose-The purpose of this study was to determine whether acute diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and mean transit time (MTT) lesion volumes and presenting National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) can identify patients with acute ischemic stroke who will have a high probability of good and poor outcomes. Methods-Fifty-four patients with acute ischemic stroke who had MRI within 9 hours of symptom onset and 3-month follow-up with modified Rankin scale were evaluated. Acute DWI and MTT lesion volumes and baseline NIHSS scores were calculated. Clinical outcomes were considered good if the modified Rankin Scale was 0 to 2. Results-The 33 of 54 (61%) patients with good outcomes had significantly smaller DWI lesion volumes (Pϭ0.0001), smaller MTT lesion volumes (PϽ0.0001), and lower NIHSS scores (PϽ0.0001) compared with those with poor outcomes. Receiver operating characteristic curves for DWI, MTT, and NIHSS relative to poor outcome had areas under the curve of 0.889, 0.854, and 0.930, respectively, which were not significantly different. DWI and MTT lesion volumes predicted outcome better than mismatch volume or percentage mismatch. All patients with a DWI volume Ͼ72 mL (13 of 54) and an NIHSS score Ͼ20 (6 of 54) had poor outcomes. All patients with an MTT volume of Ͻ47 mL (16 of 54) and an NIHSS score Ͻ8 (17 of 54) had good outcomes. Combining clinical and imaging thresholds improved prognostic yield (70%) over clinical (43%) or imaging (54%) thresholds alone (Pϭ0.01). Conclusions-Combining quantitative DWI and MTT with NIHSS predicts good and poor outcomes with high probability and is superior to NIHSS alone. (Stroke. 2010;41:1728-1735.)