Abstract
Attention has recently been drawn to the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the corpus callosum. Therefore, the pathological study of the corpus callosum is important for establishing a basis of MRI diagnosis.
We studied the pathological changes of the corpus callosum mainly in ischemic cerebrovascular disease.
Localized callosal infarctions were found 21 out of 1000 brains (2.1%) of elderly patients studied by post-mortem examinations. These were classified into 3 groups : an attenuation group, a non-attenuation group, and posterior cerebral artery area (PCA) group.
In 38 cases of progressive subcortical vascular encephalopathy (PSVE), we found many callosal lesions due to ischemia or degeneration.
In 19 cases of anterior cerebral artery area (ACA) infarctions (including ACA + MCA infarctions), the corpus callosum showed infarcts that were mainly localized in the half of the infarcted side.
In 7 cases of middle cerebral artery area (MCA) infarctions, the main callosal lesions were slight secondary degeneration.
Only 1 of 13 cases with PCA infarctions showed lesion in the splenium of corpus callosum.
We present MRI findings from 3 cases thought to have small callosal infarctions.
