INTRACRANIAL MR-ANGIOGRAPHY - ITS ROLE IN THE INTEGRATED APPROACH TO BRAIN INFARCTION

PURPOSE: To determine the contribution of cranial MR angiography (MRA) for the evaluation of patients with acute and subacute brain infarcti on. METHODS: MR and MRA studies performed on 78 adult patients with ac ute and subacute stroke were retrospectively reviewed and correlated w ith the clinical records. RESULTS: There were 50 acute and 28 subacute infarctions in our series. Five of 78 MRA exams (6%) were nondiagnost ic. 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 appearanc e. The MRA interpretations correlated with the conventional angiograph ic evaluations for 90 vessels (87%). CONCLUSIONS: Vascular lesions dem onstrated on intracranial MRA show a high correlation with infarct dis tribution. 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.