Dye injection method for the demonstration of territories supplied by individual perforating arteries of the posterior communicating artery in the dog.

Various reported methods to demonstrate the territory supplied by an intracranial artery are designed to deal with major cerebral arteries or a group of perforating arteries. We have devised a technique to demonstrate the area supplied by individual small perforating arteries using different dyes with gelatin. A temporal craniectomy was made in the dog and the posterior circle of Willis was exposed via a subtemporal route under the operating microscope. After a portion of the posterior communicating artery including one perforating artery was trapped with clips, dye was injected through the cannule. The animals were immediately sacrificed and studied. The area supplied by an individual perforating artery occupied a relatively large and distinct area, and when two dyes for two different perforators were used, no significant overlapping of the stained territories was seen. This method is useful for the study of focal cerebral ischemia caused by occlusion of a fine perforating artery and in particular it will serve to clarify the importance of preserving each perforating artery in surgery in the region of the base of the brain such as that for basilar artery aneurysm.