CT Brainstem - Video Lesson

Hey everybody, welcome back. This lesson is about the brainstem as seen in CT imaging. We'll start with a sagittal view. This is a sagittal reformation of the brain. In the graphic in the lower left side of the image, you can see this image is midsagittal. The image has been reconstructed in the standard algorithm and it's displayed with the usual windowing technique for looking at the brain. That's about eighty window width and thirty window level. This is a very helpful image because we can see the entire brainstem. The brainstem is the conduit between the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum and the spinal cord, and is the origin for ten of the twelve cranial nerves. The brainstem is partitioned into three sections. The uppermost segment is called the midbrain. It's literally in the middle of the brain. Notice that it has a beak like shape in the sagittal plane. The middle segment of the brainstem is called the pons. It's directly below the midbrain and it has a spherical shape. The lowest segment of the brainstem is called