Probing ischemic tissue fate with BOLD fMRI of brief oxygen challenge.

It has been recently shown that at-risk tissue exhibits exaggerated T(2)⁎-weighted MRI signal increases during transient oxygen challenge (OC), suggesting that the tissue is still metabolically active. This study further characterized the effects of transient OC on T(2)⁎-weighted MRI in permanent focal stroke rats (N=8) using additional quantitative measures. The major findings were: i) the ischemic core cluster showed no significant response, whereas the mismatch cluster showed markedly higher percent changes relative to normal tissue in the acute phase.