Clinical and imaging characteristics of hippocampal calcification at nonenhanced brain CT

HU Xiyang; XING Hongyan; ZHANG Na; LI Xinchun; ZHU Zhi; LI Shuofeng

Abstract：Objective To investigate the clinical and imaging characteristics of hippocampal calcification at nonenhanced brain CT.Methods A retrospective study was performed to screen cases with hippocampal calcification in 1198 patients undergone brain CT.Those cases with hippocampal calcification were put in the calcification cohort.The imaging features and the correlation of sex and age were analyzed.Another cases who matched the age and sex with the calcification cohort were selected to as the control cohort.The correlation between the calcification in the intracranial arteries and the basal ganglia in both of the two cohorts was analyzed, and the clinical data were compared.Results Intrahippocampal calcification was demonstrated on 98 of all the 1198 patients.The prevalence differences of sex had no significant (P>0.05).Its incidence trends of age-related was increasing with age, and the differences was significant in different age groups (P<0.05).Calcification was witnessed in 59 of the 98 cases (60.2%) in tail of hippocampus, 32 cases (32.7%) in body and tail, and 7 cases (7.1%) from head to tail.The mean length of hippocampal calcification was (7.1±4.3) mm (range, 3.3~42.1 mm).The proportion of the physiological basal ganglia calcification in calcification and control cohorts was 44.9% and 29.6% respectively,and the difference was significant (P<0.05).Intracranial arteries calcification showed no significant difference in both two controls, and the compare of clinical data was also no significant difference (P>0.05).Conclusion Hippocampal calcification is a relative common finding in patients over 40 years old and had certain characteristics in imaging findings.The knowledge of the prevalence of hippocampal calcification prevents the unnecessary further examinations.