Fast Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) imaging and associated artefacts in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

MRI Fast Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) sequences have become established in a wide range of central nervous system diseases. FLAIR images demonstrate excellent lesion conspicuity in a variety of disease processes. The fast FLAIR technique although giving heavily T2 weighted images combined with suppressed CSF resulting in high contrast-to-noise ratios for long T2 lesions within the brain parenchyma is susceptible to several potential imaging artefacts, including CSF related artefacts degrading the diagnostic value of the scans.