Special MR Techniques for Brain Imaging of Multiple Sclerosis: A Pictorial Essay

Abstract

Standard MR techniques for brain imaging of multiple sclerosis (unenhanced SE or fast-SE T1-weighted and dual-echo, i.e. proton density- and T2-weighted, sequences; Gd-enhanced SE T1-weighted sequences) give important information on natural history, lesion load and inflammation in multiple sclerosis. We show here the use of special MR techniques to: detect more supratentorial lesions (fluid-attenuated-inversion-recovery); increase number and contrast-to-noise ratio, i.e. conspicuity, of enhancing lesions after Gd injection (magnetization transfer, fat saturation, image subtraction, high spatial resolution, double-triple contrast dose and delayed scan); and obtain information on myelin status (diffusion-weighting).