Abstract: Leukoaraiosis (LA) has important clinical significance; however, the neurobiological mechanism was still unclear. In this paper, we reviewed literatures about the clinical symptoms, pathology and imaging of LA in order to improve the understanding of the pathologic mechanism, recognize the reversible pathological change in the earliest stage, which can help to prevent dementia.

Key words: leukoaraiosis, vascular cognitive impairment, multimodal images, pathologic mechanism, review