Role of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Diagnosing Foreign Bodies

Foreign body inside soft tissues is an object under skin, within muscle or fat which should not be present there normally. The clinical history may be useful in narrowing the differential diagnosis in many patients, but patients often forget penetration by a foreign body. Radio-opaque foreign bodies like metal can be seen on radiographs but determining the location of radiolucent foreign bodies like wood, etc., deep inside tissues, remaining undetected most frequently, until complications. So, diagnostic imaging techniques and sometimes MRI is needed to detect radio-lucent foreign body. MRI shows the foreign bodies as low signal or signal void to the muscles on both T1- and T2-weighted images. Surrounding reactive lesion, like inflammatory tissue or a hematoma, may delay the diagnosis, and is easily mistaken for a soft-tissue neoplasm when a foreign body is not identified. Two cases of foreign bodies, occasionally identified by MRI technique, were described.