The FLAIR imaging is superior to conventional MR imaging in depicting intracranial epidermoid cysts, showing variable but satisfactory lesion contrast to both CSF and brain tissue.
DW imaging reveals intracranial epidermoid tumours as hyperintense lesions relative to the brain and CSF and has the best conspicuity of the MR sequences. The hyperintensity of epidermoid tumours on DW imaging is not caused by only diffusion restriction in the lesions but by also the intrinsic T2 shine-through effect on the diffusion-weighted MR sequence.