This was a preliminary study to see whether patterns of vascular pathology correlated with a simple clinical classification of acute cerebral infarction. Thirty-two patients with acute, first-ever hemispheric cerebral infarction were prospectively studied clinically together with an extra- and transcranial Doppler ultrasound. All 14 patients with the triad of ipsilateral motor/sensory deficit, homonymous hemianopia and higher cortical dysfunction (Total Anterior Circulation Infarction, [TACI]) had occlusion of the symptomatic middle cerebral artery and/or internal carotid artery, or a severe middle cerebral artery stenosis. Three patients with lacunar infarction had no evidence of major vessel occlusion. Eleven of thirteen patients with Partial Anterior Circulation, Infarction (PACI) I (i.e. only one or two clinical features of the TACI triad) had patent symptomatic major vessels, with indirect evidence to suggest distal branch occlusion(s) of the middle cerebral artery in six. The remaining two PACI patients had major vessel occlusions. Two patients were not clinically classifiable, but both had significant vascular pathology on ultrasound. The findings of this preliminary study therefore suggest that a simple clinical classification was generally capable of predicting patterns of vascular pathology in patients with acute cerebral infarction, which could have implications for the selection of patients for clinical trials of thrombolytic therapy.