Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Dec;56(12):1501-7.
doi: 10.1177/0284185114559958. Epub 2014 Nov 25.

Intracranial hemorrhage detection over time using susceptibility-weighted magnetic resonance imaging

Juliane Schelhorn  1 , Carolin Gramsch  2 , Cornelius Deuschl  2 , Harald H Quick  3 , Felix Nensa  2 , Christoph Moenninghoff  2 , Marc Schlamann  2
Affiliations

Intracranial hemorrhage detection over time using susceptibility-weighted magnetic resonance imaging

Juliane Schelhorn et al. Acta Radiol. 2015 Dec.

Abstract

Background: The reliable detection of intracranial hemorrhages is important, but just 1 year after the hemorrhage onset it might be missed using T2-weighted spin-echo and gradient-echo sequences. Susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) is a new magnetic resonance imaging sequence that is extremely sensitive in hemorrhage detection and that might improve the detection of hemorrhages over time.

Purpose: To investigate whether the detectability of intracranial blood and its degradation products is independent of the time span after intracranial hemorrhage using SWI.

Material and methods: Sixty-six consecutive patients (28 men, 38 women) with definitely known time point of intracranial hemorrhage and available SWI sequence (1.5 or 3 T) were analyzed retrospectively. Twenty-one patients had a SWI follow-up. All SWI images were assessed by two radiologists in consensus regarding hemorrhage visibility using a 5-point scale. Statistical analysis was performed using Spearman's correlation test.

Results: Median time interval between hemorrhage and first available SWI measurement was 819 days (range, 0 days to 13.2 years). Nine of 66 patients had an isolated subarachnoid hemorrhage (iSAH) and were therefore analyzed separately. In eight of these nine patients the hemorrhage could clearly be detected, the remaining one had minor iSAH. Spearman analysis showed no significant correlation between time span and visibility (P = 0.660). In the remaining 57 patients (no iSAH) the hemorrhage was always visible achieving at least 3/5 points on the 5-point scale, and Spearman's analysis revealed only a weak correlation between time span and visibility (r = 0.493, P < 0.001).

Conclusion: The detectability of blood and its degradation products using SWI is reliably possible over a long period after intracranial hemorrhage.

Keywords: Intracranial hemorrhage; hemosiderin; magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI).

PubMed Disclaimer

LinkOut - more resources