Review of neuroimaging research progress of cerebral small vessel disease

Cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) is a disease defined by clinical symptoms and neuroimaging, which often causes a series of pathophysiological changes, blood-brain barrier destruction, brain tissue ischemia and involves cerebral arterioles, capillaries and venules. The exact pathogenesis of cSVD is unclear and there is no specific prevention and treatment for this potentially high disability rate disease.

This article reviewed the latest research progress of neuroimaging of cSVD in order to improve our understanding of cSVD’s manifestation and potential mechanism.

We introduced the neuroimaging markers which can be accurately identified by diffusion tensor imaging, including recent subcortical infarction, white matter lesions, brain atrophy, lacunar infarction, cerebral microhaemorrhage and other cSVD neuroimaging markers. Besides, we also interpreted the total load score of cSVD, which described a wide range of clinical, pathological and neuroimaging features, reflecting the acute and chronic damage of the whole brain.

Combined with the neuroimaging methods, capturing the imaging features of early cSVD can improve the diagnostic ability of cSVD and provide strong support for the longitudinal study.