Normal development of sacrococcygeal centrum ossification centers in the fetal spine: a postmortem magnetic resonance imaging study

Abstract

We have presented the timing of appearance of individual sacrococcygeal COCs and the age-specific, normative MRI reference values for sacral length and the morphometric parameters of the sacral COCs, which are of clinical importance in the diagnosis of congenital sacral abnormalities and skeletal dysplasia.

Evaluation of sacral hiatus changes in children using ultrasound

“…We assumed that the negative results in that study were derived from the small age range. Other studies on foetal MRI have shown that sacral length, height, and sagittal and transverse diameters increase linearly with advancing gestational age [ 18 , 19 ]. Nevertheless, even in our study, for infants younger than one year, although the correlation coefficients were all >0.7, the R-squared values of simple regressions were less than 0.7 ( Fig.…”

A sonographic approach to the prenatal diagnosis of skeletal dysplasias

“…The spine should be examined in all three planes. Hypomineralisation of the vertebral bodies is a very useful aid to the diagnosis of achondrogenesis (Figures B,D), but the sonographer should be wary of over diagnosing this as ossification of the cervical and sacral vertebral bodies occurs later in pregnancy up to 28 weeks' gestation . The spine may appear to be disorganised secondary to hemivertebrae, which may or may not be associated with rib anomalies in conditions such as VATER and Jarcot Levine, but the ectopic calcification seen in some chondrodysplasia punctatas also results in a disorganised appearance (Figures C,D).…”

Use of magnetic resonance imaging in the diagnosis of fetal vertebral abnormalities in utero: a single-center retrospective cohort study

“…Over the past several years, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used increasingly as an adjunct examination to US for the evaluation of fetal anomalies (9,10) and has proven useful in imaging fetal spinal canals and cord pathologies (11) with ultrafast spinecho T2-weighted imaging sequences (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17). However, literature regarding the use of MRI for the diagnosis of the musculoskeletal system (18)(19)(20)(21) and, in particular, bony spinal structures, is scarce and mainly focuses on postmortem imaging examinations without vertebral developmental abnormalities (22)(23)(24)(25)(26) or case reports (27,28). Recently, with the improvement and modification of fetal imaging of the susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) sequence, the application of fetal MRI for bony spinal structures has attracted mounting attention (29,30).…”