Brain Talk or How to Make Sense of your MRI

So maybe some of you have gotten an MRI.  And you get this report back which is pretty much written in doctor-ese.  "What in the heck does this mean?"  you think to yourself.  I was a student in Psychology many years ago and so I know a little bit about the brain but I could make no sense out of my MRI report.  And granted, what you need is for your neurologist to decipher and translate the written report and visual scans.  But in the meantime it doesn't hurt to know a few basics of what the data on your MRI report means.  After all, if you have Multiple Sclerosis, you will most likely be getting MRI's for a good long time.

I am going to use my first ever MRI report as an example and we will go through some of this gibberish. 

My report from way back in May of 2007 says the following:

MRI OF THE BRAIN WITH AND WITHOUT CONTRAST

Usually when you get your first MRI they are going to do one just of your brain.  If there is nothing there and they don't think it is MS after all then they won't bother doing the spine.  But if they find lesions as they did with me, subsequent MRI's will usually include part of your spine.  I would like to know your experiences, however.  Was your very first MRI just of your brain or of your brain and spine? 

It is usually good to get an MRI with and without the contrast.  What they do is to infuse you with this stuff called gadolinium into your veins.  So when you get an MRI with the contrast you will need to deal with an IV needle unfortunately.  What this contrast does is that it provides a much better visual view for the technicians to see certain things.  In my case it would show which lesions were more active (recent).  In other cases it might be used to see a tumor or highlight blood vessels.  Just depends on what brought you in for the MRI in the first place. 

TECHNIQUE:  Multiplanar MRI was performed of the brain, including diffusion weighted sequences.  Images also were obtained following IV administration of 12 ml of magnevist.

Basically this just tells me that they did the MRI and used a contrast agent called magnevist. 

One tip I want to tell you about the dye is make sure that they dry the alcohol they use on the swab to clean the injection site, otherwise it burns like the dickens.  I wanted to scream during one of my MRI"s because the alcohol also got into my veins.  I rode it out though because I didn't want to have to retake the MRI. 

And if you have small non-existent veins like I do, let them know ahead of time so that they don't mangle you.  Get a nurse or technician who knows what they are doing as far as getting the IV into you. 

FINDINGS:  There are multiple subcortical and periventricular white matter signal abnormalities, more numerous than expected for age.  No signal abnormalities are seen within the corpus callosum or posterior fossa.  A small focus of enhancement is suspected along the left optic nerve seen on axial images.  No diffusion-weighted abnormalities are identified.