It's not always easy to understand the technical language used when we receive an X-ray or a magnetic resonance imaging, and even more challenging is to locate the information in the image that the report provides. With this in mind, we're starting the segment "Unveil Your X-ray" to simplify things for you!
The first topic will be about vertebral hemangioma, which is the most common benign tumor of the spine and can be found in any location of the vertebral body of any vertebra (SLON, 2015).
Vertebral hemangiomas (VH) are generally lesions that exhibit slow growth and consist of a cluster of blood vessels between the bony trabeculae (within the bone structure of the vertebra). They often contain adipose tissue without neoplastic reactions. They have their own characteristic and appear with high intensity in both T1 and T2 (they appear brighter than the rest of the vertebra), which serves as a differential diagnosis for some conditions that do not follow this pattern. In magnetic resonance images, you will notice that the same image has two versions, one in black and white and the other in shades of gray. This difference in tonalities is what we call T1 or T2.
In a study conducted in a medical clinic, 726 patients (aged 12-97 years, 508 women, and 218 men) had their MRI scans evaluated for hemangiomas (998 VH found). The authors concluded that VH can be distributed throughout the spine, although they appear more frequently in the lumbar spine.
References: BROCHIN, Robert L. et al. Characterization and Distribution of Vertebral Hemangiomas Including a Novel Geographic Map. Montefiore Journal of Musculoskeletal Medicine & Surgery, v. 1, n. 1, p. 26-29, 2016.
SLON, Viviane et al. Vertebral hemangiomas: their demographical characteristics, location along the spine and position within the vertebral body. European Spine Journal, v. 24, n. 10, p. 2189-2195, 2015. #hemangioma #X-ray #benigntumor #vertebra #lumbarspine #radiography