Lumbar disc disease
In symptomatic cases the diagnosis should be confirmed by an MRI scan. However, in cases with slight symptoms, a faster and cheaper CT scan (although it is inferior to MRI scan) may be recommended. While a CT scan can show the bony structures in more detail, an MRI scan can better portray soft tissue.
Synthetic MRI
Creating a synthetic contrast weighted image is very quick and the scanner setting parameters can be changed interactively. This is different from acquiring the images directly on the MRI scanner with a pulse sequence where it might take several minutes to get new images with different settings. Synthetic MRI also enables the possibility to create new image contrast weightings after the scan has been completed and the patient has left the hospital. A prospective multi-reader, multi-case, multi-center clinical trial of overall image quality of synthetic MRI compared to conventional MRI in a general neuroimaging population has shown that synthetic MRI is non-inferior to conventional imaging.
Synthetic MRI is based on parametric maps. These maps are generated by using the MR scanner not to acquire an image, but to measure magnetic properties in the tissue.