New insights in addressing cerebral small vessel disease: Associated with extracellular fluid in white matter.

Objective: To explore the role of extracellular fluid, assessed by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics of free water (FW), in the white matter of patients with cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD).

Materials And Methods: The baseline clinical and imaging data of 129 patients with CSVD were collected and reviewed. CSVD MR markers, including periventricular white matter hyperintensity (PWMH), deep white matter hyperintensity (DWMH), cerebral microbleed (CMB), enlarged perivascular space (PVS), and lacunar infarction (LI), were identified, and CSVD burden was calculated.