The Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion Model of Transient Focal Cerebral Ischemia

Transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (tMCAO) in rodents is one of the most widely utilized models in experimental stroke studies on focal cerebral ischemia. tMCAO can be modeled in different ways, all aimed at mimicking the clinical scenario of early reperfusion after an ischemic infarct. Some models utilize mechanical occlusion to transiently occlude blood flow with an intraluminal suture, others use “humanized” clot with adjunctive thrombolytic use. This chapter will focus on these two models; the intraluminal suture and thromboembolic MCAO, as they are widely used in stroke research. In addition, several methods of cerebral blood flow (CBF) monitoring during a tMCAO procedure including laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF), laser speckle flowmetry (LSF), and carbon-14 Iodoantipyrine Autoradiography (¹⁴ C-IAP) will be described.