Right I know I’m probably gona confuse myself even more but the hospital have had a new computer system installed and ALL MRI reports have a 6 week delay! So I bought a copy on disc and now I need some help My MRI 3 years ago showed 1 white spot. Nero at time didn’t worry about it. This time there are 3 bright white spots! 2 sort of central and 1 on the right. Could the be ms and coud that right spit be causing all my left sided symptoms? Don know wat T1, fair or localiser means and also can see the spots most clearly on localiser. Does that mean that maybe its not ms? God knows I know I don’t have a clue what I’m looking for but t is my brain and I wanted the scans so I could see for myself. Any help would be most helpful Xxxxx
[ quote=JS123]Right I know I’m probably gona confuse myself even more but the hospital have had a new computer system installed and ALL MRI reports have a 6 week delay! So I bought a copy on disc and now I need some help My MRI 3 years ago showed 1 white spot. Nero at time didn’t worry about it. This time there are 3 bright white spots! 2 sort of central and 1 on the right. Could the be ms and coud that right spit be causing all my left sided symptoms? Don know wat T1, fair or localiser means and also can see the spots most clearly on localiser. Does that mean that maybe its not ms? God knows I know I don’t have a clue what I’m looking for but t is my brain and I wanted the scans so I could see for myself. Any help would be most helpful Xxxxx[/quote] Guys I’ve posted this on newbie board but you guys were so lovely in responding to my other post I wanted your opionions too Xxx
The type of scan that’s probably easiest for you to look at is FLAIR. These have images in which the gray matter (the outer layers) looks pale and the white matter (underneath the gray matter) looks darker. The lateral ventricles (the lakes of CSF in the middle of the brain) are black in FLAIR scans.
So find a FLAIR scan and then slowly go through each image, looking for paler spots that look like they don’t belong / they are different to the surroundings. Because the brain is 3D and crumpled into the skull, the outer tips of gray matter can look like pale spots - so when you see a pale spot, look at the neighbouring images to see if the pale spot eventually joins up with a chunk of gray matter. If it does and it is the same shade of gray, ignore it. If it doesn’t and/or is a different shade of gray, then it may be a lesion.
The localiser isn’t important (it’s just for positioning the scanner). T1 scans can be useful for checking if a possible lesion on a FLAIR scan has become a “black hole” - a small area that has died - to do this, find the same area of the brain that there is a lesion on the FLAIR scan and see what you can see on the T1 scan. (Non-black hole MS lesions are often invisible on T1 scans.)
There are some places that small white spots are normal. The most common ones are the anterior tips of the lateral ventricles (the tips of the lakes of CSF that are nearer the front of the head).
Hth!
Karen x