Hippocampal sclerosis without visually detectable hippocampal MRI abnormalities: automated subfield volumetric analysis

Purpose This study aims to investigate hippocampal subfield volumes in patients with hippocampal sclerosis (HS) without visually detectable MRI abnormalities and to determine the diagnostic accuracy using hippocampal subfield volumes. Materials and methods We examined 46 patients with unilateral HS who had a histopathological diagnosis, and 54 controls. The patients were divided into two groups; visually detectable HS ( n = 26) and undetectable HS ( n = 20) on MRI. The volumes of hippocampal subfield using FreeSurfer were compared among the three groups. Diagnostic accuracy was calculated as the AUC of ROC using cutoff values for each individual subfield. Results Compared with the controls, visually detectable HS showed significantly reduced volumes of all the hippocampal subfields and entire hippocampus, whereas visually undetectable HS showed significant atrophy only in the CA3 and hippocampus-amygdala-transition-area. To diagnose visually undetectable HS, the CA3 volumes had AUC of 0.719, which was higher than AUC of 0.614 based on the entire hippocampal volumes. Conclusion Visually undetectable HS demonstrated volume reductions in the CA3. Further, the CA3 volumes was more useful to diagnose visually undetectable HS compared with the entire hippocampal volumes.