Automated DWI analysis can identify patients within the thrombolysis time window of 4.5 hours

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To develop an automated model based on diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to detect patients within 4.5 hours after stroke onset and compare this method to the visual DWI-FLAIR (fluid-attenuated inversion recovery) mismatch. METHODS: We performed a subanalysis of the "DWI-FLAIR mismatch for the identification of patients with acute ischemic stroke within 4.5 hours of symptom onset" (PRE-FLAIR) and the "AX200 for ischemic stroke" (AXIS 2) trials. We developed a prediction model with data from the PRE-FLAIR study by backward logistic regression with the 4.5-hour time window as dependent variable and the following explanatory variables: age and median relative DWI (rDWI) signal intensi..