Some rare causes of intracranial calcification in childhood: computed tomographic findings

The CT findings in 36 cases of childhood intracranial calcification were analysed. Tuberous sclerosis was the commonest disease, predisposing to calcifications that were essentially nodular in type and bilaterally periventricular in distribution. Calcifications were also noted in other common diseases such as tuberculoma and osteopetrosis, and after meningitis. There were three cases of osteopetrosis with intracranial calcifications: one had calcifications in the peritentorial region and two in the junction regions between the grey and white matters with basal ganglia. These observations were previously unreported. The presence of basal ganglia calcification in Down syndrome is also reported. Most calcifications were not visualized on plain radiographs. Our study shows that if the CT attenuation values are less than 200 Hounsfield units (HU), the calcifications are not visualized on the plain radiographs.