Transillumination of the skull in premature infants.

Transillumination of the skull in infants is a simple technique which can be used to detect several major abnormalities of the central nervous system. The usefulness of transillumination has been limited, however, by the lack of standard techniques for its performance and by the absence of normal values, especially in premature infants. In healthy premature infants, there is a progressive increase in transillumination with increasing gestational age over three sites--the anterior fontanelle, the frontotemporal fossa, and the parieto-occipital eminence.