Most of you know I have copies of my mri because I have bored you rigid about it Has anyone seen theirs and could you see anything obvious on it?
Sorry for going on
I’ve got a disc of mine - you shouldn’t try to read it as there are white patches/areas etc clearly seen in mine but it’s reported as a clear MRI so only th experts know what’s what.
I know it’s really really hard. Can you go out shopping or anything today?
Big hugs xx
If you know what you’re looking for, it’s fairly easy, but telling the difference between white spots that are normal and abnormal can be tricky. If you look through any scans that have FLAIR of PD in the title, try and spot any white/pale bits that don’t join up with anything else of a similar appearance. White bits at the very tips of the ventricles (on the images, black holes in the middle of the brain) are normal. Karen x
I’ve actually resigned myself to the fact it will probably be next week now. I’m off to London with my Mum tomorrow to see Wicked so am determined to enjoy myself and forget about stuff.
Thanks Karen, I don’t have a clue what I’m looking for. There is a file marked Flair_tra. There is also 2 seperate files with one picture in each with yellow dotted lines running down them.
I have also realised I have a very fat neck
Flair_tra is perfect. Ignore the rest. Find how to scroll through the images and look for white/pale spots that look like they don’t belong. Remember that it’s 3D - a suspicious bit might actually be the tip of a normal bit that’s on the next image. Might be best to wait though! LOL 
Kx
Thanks Karen
I had a look and it just looks like a road map to me and I can’t read those either lol.
Will just carry on walking round with my phone glued to my hand!
xx
I’ve got mine, but I can’t see the lesions, even though they were pointed out to me in the neuros office. There are literally hundreds of pictures, so unless I knew exactly which frames had an abnormality, I have very little chance of spotting them unaided.
My first MRI was done privately (and within about 3 days as I recall) and I was given a large envelope with what looks like a load of x-rays inside. Subsequently, a neurologist said something like “Oh, I’ll show you where the problem is” and pointed out a slightly more pronounced bit of grey at a certain point on my spine.
A former colleague of mine was studying how experts evaluate mammograms - how do you tell the differencebetween a fuzzy off-white blob and a fuzzy off-white blob. No, I don’t know, but it is a job for the experienced clinician.
One thing about the whole business is that you put yourself in the hands of the experts … and trust them.
Geoff
Im not looking at them now to see anything sinister I just find them fascinating, I can see why Karen is so interested in it. Xx
Hi, i have a copy of my mri scan and the ct scan but ive no idea what to look for I think that’s one for the experts and their image possessing software. Come to think of it what a waste of 25 guid that was but then again its not everyday you get to see inside your own head i guess Actually my neurologist didn’t explain to much either as he spent more time talking with some guy who was installing his new computer. No worries the guy is useless anyway. I will unload one here and have it as my new profile pic, then you can all take a look inside my head…hahahaha
It might sound mad, but there is no image processing software - it’s all done with the naked eye.
As an example, I’ve changed my avatar to an old brain image of mine. If you look in the middle right of the brain, you’ll see a paler splodge with a bright area next to it. The paler area is part of the ventricle (if you scroll through the neighbouring images, you would see it joins up to the rest of the ventricle). The bright area is a lesion. If you look lower down to the left, at the top, left edge of the cerebellum (the oval area under the main part of the brain), you’ll see a small very bright spot. This is a blood vessel, not a lesion.
Kx
I have a copy of my first one and could definitely see a couple of lesions on mine (one was like a peanut, lol!). Also particularly liked the ‘top-down’ slices that made your eyeballs look like they were going to fall out.
Will have to get a copy of my second for posterity as I’m sure they don’t keep them for ever.
Mags xx
So when you get these scans, are you going through a set of 2-d slices already saved as individual image files in a format that presumably will display in an off-the-shelf image editing program that you might already have, or is the data for the 3-D scan provided to you already within some sort of program that allows you to make your own slices?
I’ve got my scans on CD to take for my second opinion but have access to them at work anyway. My area of expertise isn’t looking at scans at all but I do know a little so can see the lesion on my brain MRI.
Incidentally -my consultant had asked me to present a case for junior doctor teaching on friday (as well as other people that were asked) and he’d invited a guest neuro-radiologist to give his input and take on scans and why particulalrly types were taken.
I was chuffed I was able to spot the abnormality in the spinal cord in the correct area and get the diagnosis of NMO of one of the other presenters.
So positiviely since all this has happened I’ve learnt a lot more about different conditions and a little bitof an idea of what looks abnormal. Saying that I think I’d still wait till I had the official take from the radiologist before I looked at my own. Unless theres something really obvious sometimes even normal structures have variation between different people.
Reemz
X
Hi rizzo. You got a cute cerebellum there! mine looks kinda weird close up Your probably right about the imaging software, every time i see my images at my neuro appointments there always seams to be different colors, maybe these have added at a later date for some reason? Its hard for me to tell as my scan cd says its only compatible with winows xp and im using vista, so my images run at reduced basic level.
hahahahaha as you guys n gals can see im no computer expert im going to try this comment thing again
Hey rizzo. You got a cute cerebellum there, mine looks kinda weird close up Your probably right about the imageing software, every time i see my images at my neuro appointments there always seams to be different colours maybe these have been added at a later date for some reason? Its hard for me to tell as my scan cd says its only compatable with winows xp and im using vista,so my images run at reduced basic level only.
Each image is a 2D representation of a 3D slice of the brain. The signal in each 3D volume pixel (voxel) of the slice is converted into a 2D grayscale pixel. The higher the signal, the brighter the pixel. Each slice/image is saved as a standalone file. The viewers are bespoke software which converts the files with all sorts of functionality, depending on the package.
So, basically yes to the first part of your post.
The images are limited by the slices - you can’t change them afterwards. What you can do, with the right software, is combine the signal over different scans to improve signal to noise, select particular voxels or “regions of interest” to investigate more carefully and, depending on the type of scan, use these and other techniques to be able to work out what bits of the brain are active and when (versus controlled stimuli) - “functional MRI”.
Knowing(ish!) you, you’ll have spotted the problem with the voxel to pixel conversion: the shade of the pixel depends on the signal in the voxel, which is the average from all the matter within that volume - so the bigger the voxel (i.e. the thicker the slice generally), the more things get averaged out and so the poorer the resolution of the image. This is my big problem with NHS scans - the slices are far too thick.
Kx
LOL! You flatterer you
Yours looks different because your avatar image is from almost the exact middle of your brain. If you move a few slices in, it will look much smoother and a lot more like mine probably (my image is from about 3/4 of the way through).
Kx
Seeing as we’re playing the brain game thought I’d add my clean one for a day or two!!