My old mri report

[Melissa072]

Hi everyone,

I'm going for repeat mri at the end of the year on a 3 telsa.
And have pulled out my old mri reports and want to check something.
My spine mri says in report  :  Allowing for some artefacts in the lower thoracic cord no obvious focal lesion is seen in the visualized cord. Spondylotic changes are again demonstrated in the spine which appear essentially unchanged to comparison with the previous study dated 24/07/2007. No other new features.

My question is "what are artefacts" ?   I read on the net once that they are something that appear on mri due to metal on the body during mri, such as fillings, or  are they "objects" that they can't see properly or know what they are exactly.  Could artefacts be lesions???????????

Thanks again,
Melissa

[Melissa072]

Thanks girls.............

Melissa

[sammycung]

There are numerous kinds of artifacts that can occur in MRI. Some effect the quality of the MRI exam while others do not effect the diagnostic quality but may be confused with pathology.

Chemical Shift Artifacts
The chemical shift artifact is commonly noticed in the spine at the vertebral body end plates, in the abdomen, and in the orbits where fat and other tissues form borders. In the frequency direction, the MRI scanner uses the frequency of the signal to indicate spatial position. Since water in organs and muscle resonate at a different frequency than fat, the MRI scanner mistakes the frequency difference as a spatial (positional) difference. As a result, fat containing structures are shifted in the frequency direction from their true positions. In the spine, this causes one end plate to appear thicker than the opposite one; in the abdomen and orbits, this causes a black border at one fat-water interface, and a bright border at the opposite border. This artifact is shown in the following axial image of a kidney where the bright border along the top of the kidney and the dark border along the bottom of the kidney represent the artifact. This artifact is greater at higher field strengths and lesser at higher gradient strengths. Practically about the only way to eliminate this artifact is to use a fat suppression technique.


For more info-go to= http://www.mritutor.org/mritutor/artifact.htm

That's where i got the above info.

[Lulu54]

artifacts can be caused by a variety of things - they are part of the image that should not be there ... to read all about artifacts go to google and type in

"what are mri artifacts"

and you will have more than enough info to read.
be well,
Lulu

[Charley123]

I would call and ask your doc about that one.  I found a lot of listings about it, but my brain is too tired this morning to try to understand much of it.  Charley