Imaging of Diseases of the Cranial Nerves: Tips and Tricks

The intention of this article is to alert readers to common problems and pitfalls concerning magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for pathologies of cranial nerves. It also provides an introduction to helpful sequences and post processing techniques. There are numerous reports about imaging of the cranial nerves that show the capabilities of submillimeter heavily T2-weighted images, like the CISS or balanced FFE-sequences for the visualisation of the anatomy of the cranial nerves in the living body [1]. However, these sequences will only show the course of the cranial nerves within the basal cisterns, and whilst this is helpful in clinically-suspected cases of neurovascular compression symptoms [2, 3], in most other cases more information is needed to find the cause of cranial nerve palsy. To familiarise the reader with cranial nerve imaging, examples of the normal anatomy as well as typical pathological cases are shown in this article. Most images were acquired with a 1.5T MAGNETOM Avanto (Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany). All cited references are available online for free.