Study of variations in the anterior half of the circle of Willis using magnetic resonance angiography


Original Article

Author Details : Merlin Leena Rajan*

Volume : 8, Issue : 1, Year : 2021

Article Page : 36-41

https://doi.org/10.18231/j.ijcap.2021.008



Suggest article by email

Get Permission

Abstract

Background: The Circle of Willis is a cerebral arterial anastomosis uniting the internal carotid artery with the vertebro-basilar system. It has ten components namely- the two anterior cerebral arteries (branches of internal carotid arteries) connected by the anterior communicating artery anteriorly, and the two posterior cerebral arteries (branches of basilar artery) connected to the internal carotid arteries via the two posterior communicating arteries.
Aims: The aim of this study was to study the variations in the formation of the anterior part of the circle of Willis using Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA), and to review the embryological and clinical perspectives.
Materials and Methods: The study was conducted over 18 months in the department of Anatomy in collaboration with the department of Radio-diagnosis at Pushpagiri Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Tiruvalla. MRA study was performed on 215 images, which were obtained from the electronic database at the Department of Radio-diagnosis. All the circles were further categorized into complete and incomplete, and analyzed with regard to each of the components of the anterior part.
Results: In this study, it was observed that the entire circle was complete in approximately 62.79% of the total, the anterior part being complete in 200 images with 86 of them showing textbook configuration.
Conclusion: The incidences of variations were observed to be higher on the right side than on the left. The most frequent variation was hypoplasia of A1 segment of ACA in the anterior part of the circle of Willis.

Keywords: Circle of Willis, Magnetic resonance angiograms, Variations.


How to cite : Rajan M L , Study of variations in the anterior half of the circle of Willis using magnetic resonance angiography. Indian J Clin Anat Physiol 2021;8(1):36-41


This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.







Article History

Received : 01-01-2021

Accepted : 10-01-2021


View Article

PDF File   Full Text Article


Copyright permission

Get article permission for commercial use

Downlaod

PDF File   XML File   ePub File


Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Article DOI

https://doi.org/ 10.18231/j.ijcap.2021.008


Article Metrics






Article Access statistics

Viewed: 1971

PDF Downloaded: 625