MR imaging of intracranial epidermoid tumors: specific diagnosis with Turbo-FLAIR pulse sequence

The purpose of this study is to present the imaging findings with particular reference to the FLAIR magnetic resonance (MR) pulse sequence, of four patients with epidermoid cysts. In all cases CT showed hypodense lesions with stippled peripheral calcifications and no enhancement. The MR showed low signal intensity lesions in T1-weighted images, high signal intensity in T2-weighted lesions, no or minor enhancement after gadolinium administration and characteristic heterogeneous appearance in FLAIR images. Including the FLAIR sequence in MR imaging, a specific diagnosis can be suggested.