Vessel Wall Magnetic Resonance Imaging in a Case of Post-traumatic Multifocal Striatocapsular Hemorrhagic Infarction

Post-traumatic striatocapsular infarction is extremely rare and has been described only within the vascular territory of the perforating arteries originating from the middle cerebral artery (MCA). We recently encountered a patient presenting with unilateral multifocal striatocapsular hemorrhagic infarctions following mild head injury. This 25-year-old female was admitted to our trauma center after a motorcycle accident. Initial brain computed tomography and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging showed multifocal acute hemorrhagic infarctions with a clustering in the right caudate head, anterior limb of internal capsule, and globus pallidus. MR angiography and digital subtraction angiography showed suspicious luminal irregularities of the lenticulostriate arteries of the right MCA. Vessel wall MR images (VWI) did neither indicate intramural hematoma nor wall enhancement in the right MCA, suggesting dissection. However, VWI showed the passages of each lenticulostriate artery supplying each infarction site. Therefore, based on both conventional images and VWI, we postulate that this patient’s post-traumatic multifocal striatocapsular hemorrhagic infarctions were caused by damage to multiple lenticulostriate arteries.