Cranial Index Determination Using Computed Tomography (CT) Scans of Children with Normal Brain Development: A Retrospective Study.
Abstract
Purpose: Cranial Index (CI) determination is of clinical significance in the evaluation of skull growth and development in children. This study investigated cranial index in computed tomography (CT) scans of children seen in the Radiology Department of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital Sokoto, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A total of CT scan records of 76 children (42 males and 34 females) with normal brain development were used for this retrospective study. The cranial length (CL) and cranial width (CW) were measured on the axial CT and cranial index calculated as the percentage of cranial width to cranial length multiplied by 100. Mean values of CL, CW, CI as well as standard deviations and standard error of mean were calculated for both sexes. Results: The overall mean values for cranial length was 16.45±1.01, cranial width 13.01±0.94 and CI was 79.12±3.37. Meanwhile in males, the CI was 78.35±3.23 and 80.08±3.34 in females respectively. Thus, classifying head patterns based on the CI values seen in this study, 55.26% of the children had mesocephalic head shape and 28.95% had brachycephaly. Dolicocephaly and hyperbrachycephaly had a frequency of 7.89% each. Conclusion: Cranial Index (CI) reported in this study showed that most of the children had mesocephalic head shape (55.26%) with dolicocephaly (7.89%) and brachycephaly (7.89%) less common. The observed difference between the mean cranial index of males and females was statistically significant (p = 0.025). The report from this study is of importance in the field of pediatric neurology, anthropology as well as genetics and forensic medicine.
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References
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