A rare case of reversible splenial lesion in third trimester.

A 38-year-old female presented with sensory, motor and sphincter deficit in her third trimester. MRI brain demonstrated a focal lesion in the splenium of the corpus callosum which restricted to diffusion. Her symptoms subsequently improved following delivery. Repeat Imaging showed near complete resolution of lesion. It is important to be aware of this rare entity to avoid unnecessary investigations and interventions.

Transvaginal ultrasound-guided aspiration of an anterior sacral meningocele masquerading as a hydrosalpinx, resulting in abscess formation.

Anterior sacral meningoceles (ASMs) have a recognized association with a number of connective tissue disorders, including Marfan's syndrome, neurofibromatosis Type 1 and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. We present the case of a patient with Marfan's syndrome and ASMs who was referred to gynaecology owing to dysmenorrhoea and left-sided pelvic pain radiating to the left leg. A transvaginal ultrasound scan (TVUS) detected a left pelvic cystic tubular structure, attributed to a hydrosalpinx, which, in retrospect, likely corresponded to the ASM. The patient went on to have TVUS-guided drainage of this cystic structure, resulting in an ASM abscess. It is difficult to distinguish ASM from the vastly more common hydrosalpinx using TVUS alone, and in patients with an atypical appearing posteriorly positioned cystic pelvic lesion or in the presence of underlying conditions known to be associated with ASMs, MRI should be considered before any interventional procedure to drain the suspected hydrosalpinx transvaginally. The patient was successfully treated using a minimally invasive CT-guided posterior trans-sacral drainage technique.

Statistical morphological skull stripping of adult and infant MRI data.

This paper describes a novel automatic statistical morphology skull stripper (SMSS) that uniquely exploits a statistical self-similarity measure and a 2-D brain mask to delineate the brain. The result of applying SMSS to 20 MRI data set volumes, including scans of both adult and infant subjects is also described. Quantitative performance assessment was undertaken with the use of brain masks provided by a brain segmentation expert. The performance is compared with an alternative technique known as brain extraction tool. The results suggest that SMSS is capable of skull-stripping neurological data with small amounts of over- and under-segmentation.