The diagnosis of hippocampal sclerosis: Other techniques

Abstract

Pathologically, hippocampal sclerosis (HS) is characterized by neuronal loss and gliosis affecting particularly the pyramidal neurons of CA1, CA3, and CA4 with relative sparing of the CA2 neurons. This can be identified in vivo with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging techniques that can reveal both morphological and signal abnormalities. The morphological changes are atrophy and loss of the normal internal architecture of the hippocampus as seen in coronal section. There is also T1- and T2-weighted signal abnormality in the hippocampus. Quantitative techniques are very good at measuring any single one of these features, but the spectrum of HS includes cases in which a single feature can occasio..