[Neuroimaging characteristics of cerebral infarcts]

Over the last years, technical advances in neuroimaging have allowed drastic improvements in the assessment of acute ischemic cerebral events. Beyond conventional morphological analysis, diffusion-weighted and perfusion-weighted MRI now enable routine functional assessment of brain tissue; spectroscopy and diffusion tensor imaging still remains in the domain of clinical research. During acute ischemia events, diffusion-weighted MRI can detect the movements of water molecules and cytotoxic edema related to cell injury enabling rapid diagnosis and early assessment of cerebral ischemia. In conjunction with perfusion imaging, which detects hypoperfusion areas, diffusion-weighted MRI provides a means to identify areas of penumbra ischemia. More recent multislice computed tomographic (CT) scans with multimodal analysis are also very competitive for assessment of cerebral ischemia (non-enhanced CT, CT angiography and perfusion CT). The purpose of this paper is to describe the CT and MRI patterns during the different stages of cerebral infarcts.