BRAIN IMAGING

 

  • Computerized Tomography (CT)
    • Advantages
      • Quick
      • Widely available
      • Sensitive to blood
      • Most any patient can have scan
      • Can see bone
    • Disadvantages
      • Expensive
      • Only axial cuts are possible
      • Posterior fossa hard to visualize
      • Limited computational wizardry (vs. MRI)
      • Limited spatial resolution
      • Cannot visualize tissue around bony areas well

 

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
    • Advantages
      • Good anatomical detail
      • Computational wizardry (vs. CT)
        • T1 (shows anatomy well)
        • T2 (shows pathology well)
        • FLAIR (shows pathology even better)
        • Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) (shows acute cell damage)
        • Magnetic resonance angiography (MRA)
        • Magnetic resonance venography (MRV)
      • Can show images in any anatomical plane
      • Can visualize tissue around bony areas well
    • Disadvantages
      • Really expensive
      • Not quick
      • Does not show blood well
      • Computational wizadry can be misleading
      • Some patients don't like it (e.g. claustrophobia)
      • Some patients can't have it (e.g. pacemakers)
      • Not widely available

 

  • Things to be able to see
    • Structures
      • General cortical boundaries of hemispheric lobes
      • Corpus callosum
      • Hemispheric white matter vs gray matter
      • Anterior, posterior, and temporal horns of lateral ventricle
      • Caudate nucleus
      • Putamen
      • Globus pallidus
      • Thalamus
      • Third ventricle
      • Internal capsule
      • Superior and inferior colliculi
      • Circle of Willis
      • Cerebral aqueduct
      • Cerebral peduncle
      • Pons
      • Medulla
      • Fourth ventricle
      • Cerebellar hemispheres
      • Cerebellar vermis