Focal Central White Matter Lesions in Alexander Disease

Imaging of white matter lesions.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is very sensitive for the detection of white matter lesions (WML), which occur even in normal ageing. Intrinsic WML should be separated from physiological changes in the ageing brain, such as periventricular caps and bands, and from dilated Virchow-Robin spaces. Genuine WML are best seen with T2-weighted sequences such as long TR dual-echo spin-echo or FLAIR (fl...

Cystlike white matter lesions in tuberous sclerosis.

PURPOSE To investigate the presence of small cystlike structures in the cerebral hemispheric white matter on MR images of patients with tuberous sclerosis. METHODS The MR images of 18 consecutive patients with tuberous sclerosis were reviewed retrospectively. RESULTS Eight of the 18 patients were found to have cystlike structures in the cerebral white matter. The signal intensity of these l...

Demyelinating lesions and focal vascular lesions in the cerebral white matter of normal and irradiated monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

How Much Do Focal Infarcts Distort White Matter Lesions and Global Cerebral Atrophy Measures?

BACKGROUND White matter lesions (WML) and brain atrophy are important biomarkers in stroke and dementia. Stroke lesions, either acute or old, symptomatic or silent, are common in older people. Such stroke lesions can have similar signals to WML and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) on magnetic resonance (MR) images, and may be classified accidentally as WML or CSF by MR image processing algorithms, dis...

Can Nonenhancing White Matter Lesions Be Disregarded?

In this issue of AJNR (1), Drs Elster and Chen pose a provocative question that has certainly given us pause as we routinely dismiss a large nonenhancing white matter lesion in a cancer patient. It was with relief that we read the conclusion that white matter lesions in cancer patients that do not enhance with gadolinium-DTPA at the time of the initial MR study have a low probability of represe...