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Updated: Aug 12, 2026
Assessing Cortical Cerebral Microinfarcts on High Resolution MR Images
Published on: November 20, 2015
Intracranial MR angiography: its role in the integrated approach to brain infarction
B A Johnson1, J E Heiserman, B P Drayer
1Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, AZ 85031.
Purpose:
To determine the contribution of cranial MR angiography (MRA) for the evaluation of patients with acute and subacute brain infarction.
Methods:
MR and MRA studies performed on 78 adult patients with acute and subacute stroke were retrospectively reviewed and correlated with the clinical records.
Results:
There were 50 acute and 28 subacute infarctions in our series. Five of 78 MRA exams (6%) were nondiagnostic. Sixty examinations (80%) were positive for stenosis or occlusion. The distribution of stenotic or occlusive vascular lesions correlated with the location of infarction in 56 of the 60 positive cases (93%). MRA provided information not obtained from the MR images in 40 cases (55%). One hundred four individual vessels in 8 patients who underwent conventional cerebral angiography were compared with the MRA appearance. The MRA interpretations correlated with the conventional angiographic evaluations for 90 vessels (87%).
Conclusions:
Vascular lesions demonstrated on intracranial MRA show a high correlation with infarct distribution. MRA provides information adjunctive to conventional MR in a majority of cases. We conclude that MRA is an important component of the complete evaluation of brain infarction.
