Letter from the Guest Editor

Article Outline

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This is Part 2 of a two-part series on the CT of stroke. One of my personal academic and clinical interests is in deriving as much information as possible from the CT examinations of patients with stroke or stroke-like symptoms. My main motivation is that stroke is associated with a lot of morbidity and mortality; many patients receive CT as their first examination and not every place in the country or world can perform and/or interpret an MR examination in the urgent setting. Thus, despite the well-documented improved statistical performance of MR imaging concerning the evaluation of this patient group, we should try to optimize our performance and interpretation of CT scans with these patients.

In Part 1 of this series, there were articles on core aspects of stroke CT imaging and the history of CT scanning with special attention to stroke imaging. In that issue, we had articles regarding the history of CT scanning, evaluation of the noncontrast head CT, evaluation of the CT angiogram source images, and CT perfusion core issues.

In this, Part 2, we present articles regarding imaging of vasospasm with noncontrast head CT, CT perfusion and CT angiography, imaging of pediatric stroke, and technical considerations of CT angiography in pediatric patients and Xenon CT. This journal issue thus focuses on advanced current and future topics in stroke imaging, especially technical factors. I hope that this provokes some thought on the readers’ part regarding why and how it is, what it is that you do currently, and what you may want to change now or in the future.

As I stated previously, in the foreword of Part 1, these articles are not intended to be exhaustive or excessively detailed but aimed toward the physician trying to review and/or learn about stroke CT imaging and at least think about some of the advanced technical aspects of stroke imaging now and in the future. Of course, for more discussion and additional details, please refer to the references of each article or a search of the current literature.