What are bright spots on an MRI?

[obsidian12]

This question is primarily out of curiosity's sake, not really diagnostic. A few months ago I took part in an fMRI study (without contrast) for a psychology course for an optional extra credit (so I did it for fun rather than for diagnostic purposes). Since then, they've sent me images of my brain, which have been really neat to look at.

Anyway, I noticed that I have a bright spot (it shows up as stark white) on what appears to be my lateral and posterior pituitary gland. It literally looks like a band has encompassed what otherwise appears to be a normal pituitary. Can this be a normal variation or is this common of some sort of a pituitary lesion? Or am I completely off and something like this suggest the location of my pituitary stalk and/or optic chiasm? If it's anything to be remotely concerned about, I will discuss this with my doctor. I just wanted to get some insight before I ended up jumping the gun a little too quickly.

Thanks for your help!

[rumpled]

Yes - blood tests are the best way to figure out the hormonal stuff anyway.

White spots can be so many things... I went to a seminar and a doc talked us through reading films. It was pretty neat. If you have a CD, sometimes the software lets you  zoom in - that helps.

[obsidian12]

Thanks for the info! I see a couple of *tiny* hypointense spots, but then again, the images I have are also tiny, so it could just be the quality of the scan images that I got.

I was also curious because I've recently gained about 30 lbs in 3 months without any changes to my normal diet or exercise levels (other than really *bad* and constant fatigue but that preceded any weight gain by almost a year), and was thinking maybe something hormonal might be going on. Time to talk to my doc either way =)

[rumpled]

I had a couple of pit tumors - and I can tell you that they look for dark, not light. I know, I kept looking at the light parts, but they look for hypo-intense- that is, less intense.

If you look at my pics, I have a pit pic up there with some bright on it - that is my residual pit lighting up - I had pit surgery so my anatomy is a bit different.