Perfusion Profiles in Patients with Chronic and Acute Internal Carotid Artery Occlusion

The aim of this study was to determine if the MR perfusion profile differs between patients with acute and chronic internal carotid artery occlusions (ICAO). We included 38 chronic and 48 acute ICAO patients. Perfusion parameters were compared quantitatively and qualitatively between the two groups. Based on the qualitative ratings, a decision tree was built to differentiate chronic from acute ICAO. Chronic ICAO patients had smaller Tmax delay lesions than acute patients. A cutoff of ≤2ml of tissue with Tmax>10s had the highest sensitivity (0.979, 95% CI 0.875-0.998) and specificity (0.974, 95% CI=0.845-0.998) for identifying a chronic occlusion. The perfusion profile of chronic ICAO patients was characterized by symmetric mean transit time (MTT) (97.4%) and symmetric cerebral blood flow (CBF) (94.7%). While acute ICAO patients was characterized by Tmax delay (100%), prolonged MTT (97.9%), and decreased CBF (81.2%). When provided with a decision tree based on these profiles, independent raters could differentiate between acute and chronic ICAO with 96.5-98.8% accuracy and excellent inter-rater reliability (agreement coefficient=0.89, 95% CI 0.82-0.97). In conclusion, perfusion imaging shows promise for distinguishing chronic from acute ICAO with high accuracy. These results need to be validated in an external dataset.