Skin landmarks as ideal entry points for ventricular drainage, a radiological study.

Purpose: Ventricular drainage remains a usual but challenging procedure for neurosurgical trainees. The objective of the study was to describe reliable skin landmarks for ideal entry points (IEPs) to catheterize brain ventricles via frontal and parieto-occipital approaches.

Methods: We included 30 subjects who underwent brain MRI and simulated the ideal catheterization trajectories of lateral ventricles using anterior and posterior approaches and localized skin surface IEPs.

Skin landmarks to main cerebral structures: how to identify the main cerebral sulci? A radiological study about lateral, central, and parietooccipital sulci.

Purpose: In a previous cadaveric work, we identified and described useful and reproducible surface skin landmarks to lateral sulcus, central sulcus and preoccipital notch. Potential limitations of this cadaveric study have been raised. Thus, the objective of this study was to confirm radiologically the accuracy of these previously described surface skin landmarks on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of healthy subjects.

Visualization of the saccule and utricle with non-contrast-enhanced FLAIR sequences.

Objectives: 3D-fluid attenuation inversion recovery (FLAIR) collected 4 h after intravenous gadolinium injection can delineate the perilymphatic space (PLS) from the endolymphatic space (ELS) to capture endolymphatic hydrops, the pathological counterpart of Ménière's disease. We aimed to optimize visualization of such inner ear internal anatomy using 3D-FLAIR without injection.

Methods: 3D-FLAIR signal from different fluid compartments such as PLS and ELS was first simulated.