[Diagnostic imaging of acute head and brain injuries]

The role of neuroimaging in the acute setting of head trauma is to diagnose the extent of intracranial injury and to identify all lesions which require urgent neurosurgical treatment. Computed tomography (CT) remains the most important diagnostic tool for initial screening of trauma victims. Although magnetic resonance imaging (MR) has higher sensitivity to most traumatic lesions than CT, due to the ease and speed of CT, and the fact that sufficient monitoring of critically ill patients during the examination is much easier with CT than with MR, mean that MR is not the imaging modality of choice for the initial diagnostic work-up. Recent MR techniques such as FLAIR or diffusion imaging further improve the sensitivity of MR in head trauma. Conventional angiography is currently indicated only for few suspected vascular lesions (e.g. traumatic arterio-venous fistulas, vascular dissections).