Anatomy Of Pterygopalatine Fossa And Its Communications: High-resolution CT Studies

Purpose: The purpose of our study was to accurately visualize and measure the normal anatomy of pterygopalatine fossa and its communications on multi-detector row CT (MDCT) with thin-section HRCT (0.5mm) and multiplanar reconstruction (MPR) and curved planar reconstruction (CPR) technologies, so as to obtain credible and comprehensive information for clinical management and basic research.Materials and Methods: From June 2005 to December 2005, 167 subjects (83 males and 84 females with mean age of 41.9±14.5 years) with normal PPF and its conmunications in West China Hospital were enrolled. The pterygopalatine fossa and its communications were scanned contiguously at 0.5-0.6 mm slice thickness using Siemens Sensation Multislice (4 or 16) CT scanner with technical parameters as follows: 120kv, 100mAs; Matrix: 512×512. The MPR and CPR images were obtained on postprocessing workstation (Leonordo, Siemens).The shape and size of the pterygopalatine...