Familial Cerebral Cavernous Malformations

Atif Zafar, Syed A Quadri, Mudassir Farooqui, Asad Ikram, Myranda Robinson, Blaine L Hart, Marc C Mabray, Catherine Vigil, Alan T Tang, Mark L Kahn, Howard Yonas, Michael T Lawton, Helen Kim, Leslie Morrison, Atif Zafar, Syed A Quadri, Mudassir Farooqui, Asad Ikram, Myranda Robinson, Blaine L Hart, Marc C Mabray, Catherine Vigil, Alan T Tang, Mark L Kahn, Howard Yonas, Michael T Lawton, Helen Kim, Leslie Morrison

No abstract available

Keywords: brain; developmental venous anomalies; familial cerebral cavernous malformation; hemosiderin; mutation.

Figures

Figure 1.

Flow chart showing the management for the symptomatic and asymptomatic cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) patients. AED indicates antiepileptic drug; and MRI, magnetic resonance imaging.

Figure 2.

A solitary cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) with characteristic hypointense ring on (A) T2, (B) T2 *GRE, and (C) SWI. GRE indicates gradient recalled echo; and SWI, susceptibility-weighted imaging.

Figure 3.

SWI is far more superior to T2*-weighted GRE MRI (B) and conventional T2 sequences (C) to detect smaller type-IV cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs). Punctate hypointense lesions, black dots with blooming can be noticed both on SWI (A) and T2*-weighted GRE (B). The figure clearly demonstrates SWI to be more sensitive in identifying even small lesions in the same FCCM patient compared with T2*-weighted GRE which can identify most of the cavernomas except micro lesions. FCCM indicates familial cerebral cavernous malformation; GRE, gradient recalled echo; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; and SWI, susceptibility-weighted imaging.