For patients & families

Understanding your brain & spine MRI — in plain language.

NeuroFlamma is a tool that helps your medical team read brain & spinal-cord MRI — looking not only for inflammation like MS, but also for its look-alikes such as tumours, stroke, small-vessel changes and brain-volume loss. It does not diagnose you, and it never replaces your doctor. This page is here to help you understand the words you may hear.

نيوروفلاما أداة تساعد فريقك الطبي على قراءة أشعة الرنين للدماغ والنخاع — لا للالتهاب مثل التصلّب المتعدّد فحسب، بل أيضاً لِما يُشبهه كالأورام والسكتة وتغيّرات الأوعية الصغيرة ونقص حجم الدماغ. هي لا تشخّصك ولا تُغني عن طبيبك. هذه الصفحة لتبسيط المصطلحات التي قد تسمعها.

💙 If you or a loved one have symptoms, please see a physician. In an emergency (sudden weakness, vision loss, confusion, severe headache), seek urgent care now. إن ظهرت أعراض، راجع طبيباً. وفي الطوارئ (ضعف مفاجئ، فقدان بصر، تشوّش، صداع شديد) اطلب الرعاية العاجلة فوراً.

What can an MRI show?

A brain or spine MRI can reveal several different things. One is neuroinflammation — inflammation from the immune system attacking healthy tissue (like MS), from infections, or other causes. But similar-looking bright spots, called lesions, can also come from a tumour, a stroke, ageing small blood vessels, or loss of brain volume (atrophy). Finding the pattern — where lesions are, their shape, how they change over time — is how doctors tell these apart. NeuroFlamma has a separate specialist "reader" for each of these, to help your team consider the full picture.

How NeuroFlamma helps your care

🔎 Reads patterns

It highlights lesions and their distribution against documented medical criteria — and flags whether they look more like MS, a tumour, a stroke or small-vessel change — to support the radiologist.

🧠 3D view

It can turn the scan into a 3D model so your team can see and explain the affected areas more clearly.

📄 Clear reports

It drafts a structured report (English & Arabic) that your doctors review, correct, and confirm.

Important: every result is reviewed by a qualified specialist. NeuroFlamma is decision-support — a helper for your doctors, not a diagnosis.

Words you may hear — a small glossary

MRI / FLAIR / T2 / DWI / T1
Different types of MRI image, each good at showing something different: FLAIR and T2 make lesions easy to see, DWI lights up a fresh stroke, and T1 shows brain structure and volume.
Lesion
An area that looks different from healthy tissue on the scan. Not all lesions mean the same thing.
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
A common cause of brain/spinal-cord inflammation where the immune system affects the protective covering of nerves.
NMOSD / MOGAD
Other antibody-related inflammatory conditions that can look similar to MS but are managed differently — which is why antibody blood tests matter.
Dissemination in space/time
Doctors look for lesions in different places (space) and appearing at different times (time) to help diagnose MS.
Tumour / mass
An abnormal growth. On MRI it usually looks more solid and bulky than MS's small scattered spots — a different reader checks for this.
Stroke / infarct
An area of brain injured by a sudden loss of blood flow. A special MRI sequence (DWI) makes a fresh stroke light up, which helps tell it apart from MS.
Small-vessel disease (WMH)
Bright spots from ageing small blood vessels — very common, and the most frequent thing mistaken for MS. Related to age and blood-pressure/vascular health.
Atrophy
Loss of brain volume over time (larger fluid spaces, smaller structures). A marker your team follows, not a diagnosis on its own.
Differential
The short list of possible causes the doctor is weighing before confirming a diagnosis.

Your questions for the doctor

NeuroFlamma is clinical decision-support and research — not a final diagnosis. Always rely on your treating physician.