Ultrasound, photoacoustic, and magnetic resonance imaging to study hyperacute pathophysiology of traumatic and vascular brain injury.

Background And Purpose: Cerebrovascular dynamics and pathomechanisms that evolve in the minutes and hours following traumatic vascular injury in the brain remain largely unknown. We investigated the pathophysiology evolution in mice within the first 3 hours after closed-head traumatic brain injury (TBI) and subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), two significant traumatic vascular injuries.

Methods: We took a multimodal imaging approach using photoacoustic imaging, color Doppler ultrasound, and MRI to track injury outcomes using a variety of metrics.