2/In bread & butter neuroimaging—CT is the bread—maybe a little bland, not super exciting—but necessary & you can get a lot of nutrition out of it. MRI is like the butter—everyone loves it, it makes everything better, & it packs a lot of calories. Today, we start w/the bread!
3/The most important thing to look for on a head CT is blood. Blood is Bright on a head CT—both start w/B. Blood is bright bc for all it’s Nobel prizes, all CT is is a density measurement—and blood is denser (thicker) than water and denser things are brighter on CT
4/Once you see blood, the next question is—where is it? To know this, we need to know meningeal layers. Outer most layer is the dura mater. I remember it bc dura mater is DURAble. It is thick like a winter coat. Like a winter coat, it doesn’t hug the curves & hides rolls of fat.
5/Inner most layer is the pia mater. It is thin and hugs the curves of the brain like an adult onsie. I remember it bc pee-ah mater is just a few letters away from pee-jay mater—so it sounds like adult onsie PJs
6/In between these two layers is the arachnoid. It is called that because it contains web like septations like a spider’s web (ARACHnoid like ARACHnophobia). So now you know the meningeal layers. I remember the order bc the meninges “P-A-D” the brain—Pia/Arachnoid/Dura
7/Blood can be anywhere in these layers. EPIdural is beside the dura, or outside all layers. SUBdural is below the dura, but still outside pia & arachnoid. SUBarachnoid is below both dura & arachnoid. I’m skipping intraparenchymal hemorrhage here bc that is relatively obvious.
8/Each of these types of hemorrhage has a unique look on CT. Epidural hemorrhage is called “lentiform” bc it is convex out like a lens or a pregnant belly. Subdural hemorrhage wraps around the brain like a crescent. Subarachnoid hemorrhage is curvy between gyri like a snake
9/So why is intracranial hemorrhage so dangerous? You won’t exsanguinate from intracranial hemorrhage like a retroperitoneal bleed. The reason intracranial hemorrhage is so dangerous is bc the calvarium is a closed space with no give for anything extra.
10/So when you add something extra like blood, the calvarium won’t give, and something else has to—and that’s the brain. Blood will push on the brain causing damage from the associated mass effect.
11/Let’s talk about mass effect. Symmetry is beautiful—that’s why Denzel Washington is such the epitome of beauty bc he is perfectly symmetry. The brain on a CT should be symmetric. A CT tech once told me he could make all the findings on CTs bc all he did was look for asymmetry.
12/So on every CT you should look for symmetry—and things that are asymmetric are BAD. If you can’t draw a line down the middle have each side be a mirror image—something is wrong.
13/This asymmetry was from an subdural hemorrhage that was the same density as brain—making it difficult to visualize, but you could tell it was there from the asymmetry it caused. Mass effect causes asymmetry
14/Mass effect can cause brain to herniate into wrong compartments. There are 2 main herniation types. Subfalcine herniation is where one side slides under the falx to the other side. On CT, we call this midline shift—how much one side shifts under the midline to the other side
15/Next is transtentorial herniation—where the supratentorial compartment herniates through the tentorium that separates the cerebral hemispheres from the cerebellum. We see this on CT by effacement of the basilar cisterns—which are CSF spaces at the base of the brain.
16/The two most important cisterns for herniation are the suprasellar cistern—which looks like a pentagon—and the ambient/quadrigeminal cistern that look like the mouth of a semi-evil smiley face with the lateral and third ventricles as the eyes and nose.
17/With transtentorial herniation, we are looking for that pentagon to become a triangle or that smiley to get a Bell’s palsy—with part of it missing. If you see either of those, there is transtentorial herniation.
18/The final thing to look for on a head CT is a stroke. We see this as loss of gray-white differentiation. Normally, the interface between gray and white matter is crisp and looks like long octopus arms of white matter reaching out into the gray matter.
19/With a stroke, this interface gets blurred. It is like some took a painting that had a clear line between the white and gray matter and just smeared the white matter into the gray matter. If I see anywhere where the white matter looks smeared into the gray, I call an infarct
20/So now you know the basics of head CTs! Hopefully now your reads of the bread of neuroimaging will go smoothly like butter!
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1/Do radiologists sound like they are speaking a different language when they talk about MRI?
T1 shortening what? T2 prolongation who?
Here’s a translation w/an introductory thread to MRI.
2/Let’s start w/T1—it is #1 after all! T1 is for anatomy
Since it’s anatomic, brain structures will reflect the same color as real life
So gray matter is gray on T1 & white matter is white on T1
So if you see an image where gray is gray & white is white—you know it’s a T1
3/T1 is also for contrast
Contrast material helps us to see masses
Contrast can’t get into normal brain & spine bc of the blood brain barrier—but masses don’t have a blood brain barrier, so when you give contrast, masses will take it up & light up, making them easier to see.
So you don’t have time to struggle w/that stroke alert head CT.
If there’s no flow, what are the things you need to know??
Here’s a thread to help you with the five main CT findings in acute stroke.
2/CT in acute stroke has 2 main purposes—(1) exclude intracranial hemorrhage (a contraindication to thrombolysis) & (2) exclude other pathologies mimicking acute stroke.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t see other findings that can help you diagnosis a stroke.
3/Infarct appearance depends on timing.
In first 12 hrs, the most common imaging finding is…a normal head CT.
However, in some, you see a hyperdense artery or basal ganglia obscuration.
Later in the acute period, you see loss of gray white differentiation & sulcal effacement
Brain MRI anatomy is best understood in terms of both form & function.
Here’s a short thread to help you to remember important functional brain anatomy--so you truly can clinically correlate!
2/Let’s start at the top. At the vertex is the superior frontal gyrus. This is easy to remember, bc it’s at the top—and being at the top is superior. It’s like the superior king at the top of the vertex.
3/It is also easy to recognize on imaging. It looks like a big thumb pointing straight up out of the brain. I always look for that thumbs up when I am looking for the superior frontal gyrus (SFG)
Here's a little help on how to do it yourself w/a thread on how to read a head CT!
2/In bread & butter neuroimaging—CT is the bread—maybe a little bland, not super exciting—but necessary & you can get a lot of nutrition out of it
MRI is like the butter—everyone loves it, it makes everything better, & it packs a lot of calories. Today, we start w/the bread!
3/The most important thing to look for on a head CT is blood.
Blood is Bright on a head CT—both start w/B.
Blood is bright bc for all it’s Nobel prizes, all CT is is a density measurement—and blood is denser (thicker) than water & denser things are brighter on CT
1/Having trouble remembering what you should look for in vascular dementia on imaging?
Almost everyone worked up for dementia has infarcts. Which ones are important?
Here’s a thread on the key findings in vascular dementia
2/Vascular cognitive impairment, or its most serious form, vascular dementia, used to be called multi-infarct dementia.
It was thought dementia directly resulted from brain volume loss from infarcts, w/the thought that 50-100cc of infarcted related volume loss caused dementia
3/But that’s now outdated. We now know vascular dementia results from diverse pathologies that all share a common vascular origin.
It’s possible to lose little volume from infarct & still result in dementia.
So if infarcts are common—which contribute to vascular dementia?