Imaging of Hematoma and Perihematomal Edema in Experimental Intracerebral Hemorrhage - Animal Models of Acute Neurological Injuries: Injury and Mechanistic Assessments - page 663

Chapter 56
Imaging of Hematoma and Perihematomal Edema
in Experimental Intracerebral Hemorrhage
Veit Rohde , Walter Schulz-Schäffer , and Timo Krings
Abstract
The aim is to outline how experimental intracerebral hematoma and perihematomal edema can be imaged.
For postmortem investigation of the clot, morphometric analysis, spectrophotometry, and magnetic reso-
nance imaging (MRI) are used. The edema in sacrifi ced animals is determined by the brain water content.
In living animals, MRI is the imaging modality of choice for visualization of hematoma and edema.
Key words: Intracerebral hematoma, Edema, Morphometric analysis, Spectrophotometry, Magnetic
resonance imaging
1. Introduction
Intracerebral hemorrhage models have been established in mice,
rats, rabbits, cats, monkeys, and pigs. In mice and rats, hematoma
is induced either by injection of autologous blood into the brain
parenchyma or by injection of collagenase leading to disruption of
small brain parenchyma vessels with subsequent formation of a clot
( 1, 2 ). In larger animals, blood injection with or without precedent
balloon infl ation is the preferred technique for inducing the hema-
toma ( 3, 4 ). With these models, the deleterious effect of the large
variety of blood degradation products on the surrounding intact
brain and the identifi cation of factors promoting secondary brain
damage after bleeding were investigated. Another focus in the ani-
mal experiments was to test the effects of surgery and fi brinolytic
therapy on hematoma size and secondary brain damage ( 5 ).
Accordingly, in these studies hematoma size as well as edema
volume, which probably refl ects some of the morphological