A pitfall in pituitary imaging using standard head magnetic resonance (MR).
We present a case of a young girl complaining of headaches in whom a hypointense area was found in the pituitary gland with a standard magnetic resonance (MR) image of the head. This finding did not agree with clinical symptoms, so a dedicated MR of the sellar region was obtained. We determined that the supposed mass was artifact caused by volume averaging. Volume averaging is the effect of expressing the average density of two structures of a 3D slice on a 2D image. Increased slice thickness leads to increased volume averaging and decreased resolution. Dedicated MR uses thinner 3D slices to reconstruct an image and thus has better spatial resolution than standard MR. We emphasize the need of dedicated MR to evaluate pituitary lesions.
Beck
Christopher
C
Louisiana State University School of Medicine, Shreveport, LA, USA.
Riel-Romero
Rosario
R
Gonzalez-Toledo
Eduardo
E
D000236:Adenoma / Q000175:diagnosis*; D000293:Adolescent; D016477:Artifacts; D003951:Diagnostic Errors / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D010911:Pituitary Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis*