Can MRI Detect Tumors?
There are benign and malignant tumors. If a patient is diagnosed with a malignant tumor, examination is particularly important for malignant tumors. Through examination, the malignancy degree of a tumor can be more clearly understood, which is the key to developing an appropriate treatment plan for the patient. MRI is a common examination method for malignant tumors. However, most people do not understand MRI examination. Here is an introduction to the signals of MRI for malignant tumors.
MRI Signals of Malignant Tumors
During the detection of malignant tumors, the condition of the tumor can be more clearly observed through imaging judgment, which is the signal provided by MRI and the most obvious manifestation. The MRI manifestations of malignant tumors mostly show long T1 and long T2 signals. On the enhanced sequence, most of them show obvious enhancement, and on the diffusion sequence, most of them show limited diffusion. These are the characteristics of malignant tumors, but not absolute. Besides, some signs such as unclear tumor boundary, blurred edge, and large lesion size often indicate malignant tumors.
Precautions for MRI Examination
1. Patients with claustrophobia should not undergo MRI examination because the examination requires patients to be placed in a relatively small space for a relatively long time, usually about half an hour. If a patient has claustrophobia, the MRI examination may cause psychological fear and prevent normal examination. In this case, other methods should be adopted for examination.
2. Abdominal examination requires fasting. If MRI examination is targeted at abdominal pelvic examination, patients need to be fasting before the examination and keep their bladder full. Keeping the bladder full can make the bladder lighter and allow the surrounding organs to be more clearly visualized.
3. Metal objects on the body need to be removed. During MRI examination, if patients are wearing metal items such as watches, earrings, hearing aids, necklaces, etc., they need to be removed before the examination. These metal objects can affect the magnetic field during the examination and lead to incorrect results. If there are metal implants in the body, patients should inform the doctor, who will use special techniques during the examination to maximize the accuracy of the results and avoid any issues caused by metal objects.
4. Pregnant women should be cautious. If a pregnant woman needs to undergo MRI examination, it should be performed under the guidance of a doctor. Although MRI examination does not emit radiation, it uses magnetic fields to assist in the examination. Although there are no reports that magnetic fields can affect the fetus, pregnant women should still exercise caution during the examination.