Diffusion-Weighted MRI Monitoring of Embolic Brain Stroke for COVID-19 Patients

Abstract

Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic around the world has some adverse effects on the human body, and there is limited data about the impacts of this pandemic disease on embolic brain stroke. Materials and Methods: Fifty-two COVID-19 patients with embolic brain stroke were included in this study. The COVID-19 patients were diagnosed according to their clinical findings. The patients underwent diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values of different points of their brain were calculated using MRIcro software. Results: The embolic strokes were mostly diagnosed in the medial temporal lobe for both COVID-19 and others. In addition, a combination of COVID-19 with other inflammations and infections was not diagnosed in the studied patients. The mean ADC values of the central region were significantly lower than other regions of the brain stroke for the COVID-19 and other patients. Moreover, the maximum and minimum ADC values of the central region for COVID-19 and other patients were significantly different compared to the other regions. Whereas, the mean and minimum ADC values of the brain's normal regions were not significantly different in the edge regions for both groups, while in the COVID-19 and other patients the maximum ADC value of the edge regions was considerably lower compared to the normal regions. Conclusion: The embolic stroke of COVID-19 patients is likely to occur in the medial temporal lobe of the brain. Moreover, the ADC and relative ADC (rADC) values of embolic brain stroke in COVID-19 patients are not significantly different compared to others.

Keywords

• adc
• brain stroke
• covid-19
• dwi
• mri