Cerebral lesions of multiple sclerosis: is gadolinium always irreplaceable in assessing lesion activity?

Purpose: We aimed to identify imaging characteristics on conventional magnetic resonance imaging that could predict multiple sclerosis (MS) brain lesion activity without contrast media administration.

Materials And Methods: Magnetic resonance data sets of forty-two patients with relapsing-remitting MS who presented symptoms or signs suggestive of new disease activity were retrospectively reviewed. We classified the MS lesions into three types according to different patterns present on T2-weighted images and evaluated their relationship with the contrast uptake.