Introduction:
Differential diagnosis of white matter lesions (WML) is quite extensive and includes hypoxic-ischemic origin, inflammation, infection, toxic or metabolic agents, trauma, hereditary diseases or even normal aging. One of the most common questions to be answered is: do the lesions represent multiple sclerosis? At the moment there is no single MRI technique that could unambiguously answer this question. The aim of the study is to get acquainted with possibilities of conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in detection, characterization and differentiation of white matter lesions.
Materials and methods:
1T or 1.5T MRI scanner were used to examine the patients suspected for WML and images were acquired according to the standard protocol at our institution.
Results:
In selected illustrative cases we present imaging findings characteristic for different pathological white matter processes.
Conclusion:
MRI is a very sensitive but unfortunately relatively unspecific method for evaluation of WML. As mentioned earlier, differential diagnosis of WML is a long list. Due to that the diagnosis of a specific pathological process characterised by one or more lesions in the white matter has to be made by combining clinical aspect and radiological assessment.
