MR imaging has rapidly become the modality of choice in the evaluation of the brain in recent years because of its excellent soft tissue contrast. It provides high definition of the brain anatomy and with the appropriate choice of sequences, it provides good lesion detection and characterisation.

It has proved to be extremely useful in the detection of lesions like : congenital abnormalities, vascular abnormalities and haemorrhage, ischaemia and infarction, neoplasms, infection and inflammation, trauma, white matter disease, neuroectodermal syndromes etc.

Normal sagittal image of the brain

Axial T1* weighted and proton density images and MR angiogram showing a large left ophthalmic artery aneurysm.

Coronal T2 weighted and FLAIR images of mesial temporal sclerosis in the right hippocampus.

Coronal and axial post-contrast T1 weighted and pre-contrast axial proton density images of cysticerosis in the right occipital region.

Axial T2 weighted and post-contrast T1 weighted images showing gliomatosis cerebri.

Sagittal and axial T1 weighted images of an arachnoid cyst.

Sagittal T1 weighted image of the brain showing chiari malformation and pituitary adenoma.

Axial FLAIR images of the brain showing areas of demyelination from multiple sclerosis.

Sagittal T1 weighted image of the brain showing superior sagittal sinus thrombosis. Axial FLAIR images of the brain showing venous infarction associated with the sinus thrombosis.