[Magnetic resonance tomography diagnosis of neuronal migration disorders]

Twenty-one MRI examinations of the brain were performed in 19 children with neuronal migration disorders. Multiplanar oriented spin-echo sequences were on a scanner with 1.5 T. In 8 children we performed an additional turbo-inversion recovery (TIR) sequence. Results of sonography or CT from five children were compared with MRI scans. Using the actual nomenclature, we found the following migration disorders: lissencephaly (n = 6), cobblestone lissencephaly with Walker-Warburg syndrome (WWS) (n = 2), polymicrogyria and schizencephaly (n = 2), focal heterotopia (n = 5), diffuse heterotopia (n = 2) and hemimegalencephaly (n = 2). MRI was superior to CT and sonography in all children. Except for the two boys with WWS, the TIR sequence was the best to demonstrate the changes in migration disorder because of the high contrast between gray and white matter. We demonstrate the characteristic features of the different migration disorders and compare them with the existing literature.