Targeting Cerebral Small Vessel Disease With MRI

Although anatomic imaging, diffusion-weighted imaging, functional MRI, and angiography (see the Table) can be considered conventional because of their widespread use, they are still in vivid development. Increasingly, detailed tissue anatomy and subtle damage can be studied as a result of the ongoing advancement of imaging hardware, including the introduction of ultrahigh field MRI (7 Tesla and beyond) and high-density receive arrays for signal reception. Examples are the improved depiction of penetrating arteries and small draining veins, enlarged perivascular spaces, microbleeds, microinfarcts, and using diffusion-weighted imaging, even acute microinfarcts.