Hampton's hump sign

Picture of a camel displaying its hump which is a rounded mass or protuberance on its back.

Hampton's hump sign, also called Hampton hump, is a radiological sign which consists of a shallow wedge-shaped opacity in the periphery of the lung with its base against the pleural surface. It is named after Aubrey Otis Hampton who first described it in 1940.


Hampton's hump along with Westermark's sign aids in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.

Hampton's Sign.

Yellow star in the region of wedged-shape opacity that represent Hampton's Sign.  

Westermark’s Sign

In chest radiography, the Westermark Sign, is a sign that represents a focus of oligemia due to vasoconstriction seen distal to a pulmonary embolus (PE).

Pulmonary embolism (PE) is an important cause of mortality, particularly among hospitalized patients. Because of the difficulty in diagnosing PE on the basis of clinical and laboratory data, imaging studies play a central role in establishing or excluding this diagnosis. While the chest x-ray is normal  in the majority of PE cases, the Westermark sign is seen in 2% of patients.

Westermark's Sign. Frontal radiograph of a patient with pulmonary embolism showing  increased radiolucency in the upper and middle zones in the left lung due to decreased vascularization.

The sign results from a combination of:

1. The dilation of the pulmonary arteries proximal to the embolus.
2. The collapse of the distal vasculature creating the appearance of a sharp cut off on chest radiography.