Mike Wattjes, Frederik Barkhof and Hugo Vrenken, affiliated with the MS Center of Amsterdam UMC, together with international fellow radiologists and neurologists, have developed a new guideline for the use of MRI in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). It is a complete guideline that will be supported and used by radiologists worldwide. The guideline has been published in the Lancet Neurology.

The 2015 MRI in MS and 2016 Consortium of MS Centers guidelines on the use of MRI in diagnosis and monitoring of MS made an important step towards appropriate use of MRI in routine clinical practice. Since their promulgation, there have been substantial relevant advances in knowledge, including the value of spinal cord MRI.

This 2021 revision of the previous guidelines on MRI use for patients with MS merges recommendations that translates research findings into clinical practice to improve the use of MRI for diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of individuals with MS. These developments suggest a changing role of MRI for the management of patients with MS in the clinical setting.

The new guidelines recommend changes in MRI acquisition protocols, such as emphasizing the value of three dimensional-fluid-attenuated inversion recovery as the core brain pulse sequence to improve diagnostic accuracy and ability to identify new lesions to monitor treatment effectiveness, and we provide recommendations for the judicious use of gadolinium-based contrast agents for specific clinical purposes. Additionally, the international consortium also extends the recommendations to the use of MRI in patients with MS in childhood, during pregnancy, and in the post-partum period.

Read the publication in the Lancet Neurology: 2021 MAGNIMS-CMSC-NAIMS consensus recommendations on the use of MRI in patients with multiple sclerosis