Imaging Anatomy of the Human Brain

摘要

Understanding neuroanatomy is fundamental to the practice of child neurology and epilepsy, and neuroimaging is our window into the structural complexities of normal and abnormal brain. While clinicians rely on neuroradiology colleagues for official interpretations, it is valuable to be able to personally review the scans and correlate anatomy with symptoms. Most of us learned neuroanatomy in medical school through two-dimensional pictures and drawings, and perhaps got a sense of three-dimensional structure through models or brain dissection. But with the advent of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other imaging modalities, the beauty and complexity of the brain has unfolded in a truly revolutionary sense. Beyond labeling brain areas by external or internal landmarks, it is now possible to visualize activation of selective brain regions with functional MRI (fMRI), white matter fiber direction, and orientation with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and regional metabolic activity with positron emission tomography. These are but a few of the advanced neuroimaging techniques essential to daily practice.