CT Cerebral Blood Flow Maps Optimally Correlate With Admission Diffusion-Weighted Imaging in Acute Stroke but Thresholds Vary by Postprocessing Platform

Admission absolute and normalized "second-generation" cine acquired CT cerebral blood flow lesion volumes correlate more closely with diffusion-weighted imaging-defined infarct core than do those of CT cerebral blood volume or mean transit time. Although limited availability of diffusion-weighted imaging for some patients creates impetus to develop alternative methods of estimating core, the marked variability in quantification among different postprocessing software limits generalizability of parameter map thresholds between platforms.