Ultrafast Doppler Observation in Rat Stroke Model-Comparison with High Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Stroke is the leading cause of death or disability in adults in the modern day due to a sudden interruption in the blood supply of the brain tissue. Different cerebrovascular environment majorly determines the brain tissue fate after stroke. Hemodynamic observation is motivated to access related cerebral blood volume (CBV) changes at different lesion size, position, recovery efficacy, and even blood flow compensation of stroke. Ultrafast Doppler imaging is a quantitative vasculature imaging to map hemodynamics in preclinical small animal brains. It is a powerful tool to monitor the ischemic/reperfusion in stroke lesions to address the physiological mechanisms between the perfusion and tissue/function loss. In this study, the ultrafast Doppler images of stroke lesions upon middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo) were compared with T2-weighted (T2w) and susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) from high field MRI, the gold standard neuroimaging for stroke brains, to show the validation/complementary information to further understand the mechanism of strokes. In this study, the ultrafast Doppler images show that the flow energy is pretty symmetry in the intact brain, but it is apparently defect in stroke lesion side compared to the normal side.