SPIR MRI in spinal diseases

We report on our experience with the fat suppression technique of spectral presaturation with inversion recovery MR in imaging certain spinal disorders. This technique may assist in demonstrating or excluding the presence of fat within a lesion (such as lipoma, dermoid, teratoma) or within a normal structure (i.e., vertebral body or epidural space). The method can also be used to suppress normal fat (such as marrow or epidural fat) thus increasing the conspicuity of adjacent high signal intensity lesions seen on T1-weighted images (such as blood and contrast-enhancing tumors or inflammatory lesions).