Maximizing Current Neuro-Imaging: Tricks and Traps (slideshow)

The advent of MRI in the 1980s transformed the world of diagnostic imaging with a better ability to localize neurological disease and an unprecedented ability to differentiate disease processes. Previously, the only non-invasive imaging of neurological disease was with plain radiographs and CT, which at that time was a single detector scanner with significantly longer scan times and with poor spatial resolution. X-rays and CT were supplemented with catheter neuroangiography which prior to the development of CT had been used to localize lesions by demonstrating mass effect through displacement of vessels. There have been many important developments in the field of MR imaging since the 1980's, both in MR equipment and in scanning techniques, making those earliest scans seem of very poor quality by comparison.