Incidence of potential cerebral cavernous malformations in brain magnetic resonance imaging performed during health check‒up

Abstract

This retrospective imaging study included 22,470 examinations of 12,265 persons who underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)over 11 years during health check‒ups at the health check‒up center in Chunichi Hospital. All T1‒, T2‒, fluid attenuation inversion recovery‒, and T2*‒weighted images were recorded and analyzed at every MRI examination. Of the 12,265 subjects(7,954 men and 4,311 women), 66 (0.54%；53 men and 13 women)had incidental cerebral cavernous malformations(CCMs). The frequency of CCMs in men(0.67%)was approximately twice as high as that in women(0.3%). The observed frequen-cies for men and women reported recently in population‒based CCM prevalence studies from other coun-tries were similar；therefore, this study might indicate a more frequent tendency for CCMs in Japanese men. Thirty‒four subjects harboring CCMs were followed by serial MRI examinations during the study period. Nine CCMs increased in size in this period, and 6 of them exhibited signal characteristics of hyper-intensity on T1‒weighted MR images.