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Paediatric head and neck imaging

Department of Radiology, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Great Ormond Street, London WC1N 3JH, UK

• The spectrum of pathologies in childhood is very different from that presenting in adulthood.
  
• Obtaining high quality imaging may be challenging and depending on age often requires sedation and long imaging times.
  
• The majority of conditions encountered are congenital abnormalities, infection, inflammation and trauma. Tumours, particularly malignant ones, are far less common in children.
  
• In understanding pathologies it is very helpful to describe the abnormalities according to their primary location. These may be broadly divided into conditions of the temporal bone, orbit, face and neck.
  
• Further subdivision into the neck compartments aids in narrowing the differential diagnosis of the several conditions that may arise in this region.
  

The following article is a discussion on the imaging characteristics of the most frequently encountered and clinically important paediatric conditions occurring in the head and neck. Children have specific imaging requirements and present with a different spectrum of pathologies than those seen in adults. They may be broadly divided into congenital anomalies, infection, inflammation and neoplasia. Further subdivision by anatomical location is a key feature in narrowing the differential diagnosis