A guide to imaging for common neurological problems.

Patients with headache, transient neurological episodes, symptoms after minor head trauma, and neck and low back pain often present to general practitioners and emergency room physicians. The examining doctor may be uncertain whether neurological imaging is needed. In this article, we discuss indications for imaging and tests that would be most useful in these scenarios. Table 1 summarises our approach to this problem. Figure 1 provides a walk through of representative images from patients with headache or minor head trauma, showing normal and abnormal findings. Figure 2 shows various examples of abnormal imaging findings re levant to the clinical scenarios described here. Occasionally, imaging leads to the incidental discovery of a lesion of unknown importance. We will also discuss the management and interpretation of such findings.