Contralesional thalamic surface atrophy and functional disconnection 3 months after ischemic stroke

Abstract

Background: Remote structural and functional changes have been previously described after stroke and may have an impact on clinical outcome. We aimed to use multimodal MRI to investigate contralesional subcortical structural and functional changes 3 months after anterior circulation ischemic stroke. Methods: Fifteen patients with acute ischemic stroke had multimodal MRI imaging (including high resolution structural T1-MPRAGE and resting state fMRI) within 1 week of onset and at 1 and 3 months. Seven healthy controls of similar age group were also imaged at a single time point. Contralesional subcortical structural volume was assessed using an automated segmentation algorithm in FMRIB's Integ..