Figure 1.

The clinical problem of perinatal white matter injury (WMI) has evolved over time. Upper panels: photographs of postmortem brain slices of preterm infants with WMI (published with permission from http://neuropathology-web.org/). Lower panels: T2‐weighted MR images of preterm infants with WMI. Left part of the figure: in the 1980s, cystic periventricular leukomalacia (cPVL) was often observed in preterm infants. cPVL is associated with large cystic lesions in the white matter clearly present at macroscopic postmortem tissue and at (transverse) MRI scan (T2 sequence) as indicated by the green arrowheads. cPVL leads to severe disabilities such as cerebral palsy. Right part of the figure: at present, diffuse WMI is most often associated with atrophy of white matter causing loss of brain volume (middle (coronal) MRI scan) and punctate white matter lesions (PWML) (right (coronal) MRI scan: red arrowheads). Diffuse types of WMI are mainly associated with impaired cognitive functioning later in life