Role of Low-Field MRI in Acute Stroke

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Neurology
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Conventional neuroimaging access is often delayed or unavailable in acute stroke care.
• Portable, low-field (LF) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is emerging as a solution for point-of-care diagnostics.
• Advances in hardware and reconstruction methods have improved LF-MRI feasibility and image quality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the evolving role of LF-MRI in acute stroke management.
• To summarize LF sequence principles relevant to stroke evaluation.
• To discuss clinical evidence, implementation, and future directions for LF-MRI in stroke care.

Main Methods:

• Review of current literature on LF-MRI for acute stroke.
• Summary of LF sequence principles and their impact on image quality and quantification.
• Analysis of clinical evidence for LF-MRI in stroke diagnosis, triage, and post-treatment assessment.

Main Results:

• LF-MRI constraints (SNR, diffusion weighting, acquisition time) affect lesion conspicuity and quantification reliability.
• Clinical evidence supports LF-MRI for stroke-type classification, tissue confirmation, and wake-up stroke triage.
• LF-MRI can facilitate serial assessment in post-therapeutic settings.

Conclusions:

• LF-MRI is a valuable adjunct for acute stroke care, especially in resource-limited or emergency settings.
• Implementation requires careful consideration of use cases to complement, not replace, established imaging pathways.
• Future research should focus on workflow integration, hardware/sequence development, and AI applications for enhanced stroke management.