Anthropometry of the intracranial volume

Abstract

Intracranial volume (ICV) is an important data to evaluate the premorbid brain size in pathological conditions. It is also one of the most important characters for determining the racial difference. Several methods have been proposed for the assessment of ICV. Some of them are used only for the macerated skulls and most of them are suitable both for the dry skulls and living subjects. The packing/filling method is the most accurate in vitro method for the measurement of ICV. The others are the craniometry and cephalometry methods predicting the ICV using the measures of length, width and height of the skull directly over the bony structure or lateral and antero-posterior roentgenograms. Finally, the stereological methods are the recently proposed techniques that provide unbiased estimation of the ICV. The requirement for the application of this method is an entire set of two-dimensional slices through the object, provided they are parallel, separated by a known distance, and begin randomly within the object, criteria that are met by standard magnetic resonance and computed tomography imaging techniques. In the presented section we discussed the methods for the assessment of ICV. The filling method seams to be the most accurate for the assessment of cranial capacity. However, it must be used on macerated skulls. Even though the craniometry and cephalometry are quick and easy to apply, the obtained values may not be accurate. The stereological techniques require much more time than the others. However, the obtained values are unbiased and the method could be applied for living subjects. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012. All rights reserved.