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FAT SUPPRESSION MR IMAGING OF VERTEBRAL HEMANGIOMAS *

  • İ. KOVANLIKAYA
  • H. ÇAKMAKÇI
  • D. ÖZAKSOY
  • Y. GÖKTAY
  • C. KÜÇÜKLER
  • E. İĞCİ
  • M. MANİSALI

J Turk Spinal Surg 1995;6(2):89-93

Vertebral hemangiomas include a wide range of signal characteristics of MRI. Ali vertebral hemangiomas do not have pathognomonic signal properties and it's aften difficult to distinguish them from various processes affect-ing bone marrow, such as hemorrhage, trombosis, radiation therapy, degenerative disk diseases and even some metastasis. Fat suppression magnetic resonance imaging is performed to investigate the additional advantage of the technique, to diagnose atypical vertebral hemangiomas. Eighteen patients with a total of 21 vertebral hemangiomas were studied with conventional and fat suppressed MRI. Fat suppressed T1 weighted images revealed signal decrease within the lesions, having atypical signal properties on conventional MR images. Athough nonfat suppressed images ailowed to diagnoose 84% of vertebral hemangiomas, this ratio for fat saturation images was increased to 96%. Fat suppression MRI is found as a valuable technique in evaluation of atypical forms of vertebral hemangiomas and differentiate lesions, having similar signal properties.

Keywords: Fat suppression magnetic resonance imaging - vertebral hemangiomas - fat saturation.