Cystic lesions occurring in the submental and submandibular resions are frequently percutaneously palpable and present relatively minor difficulty to clinical diagnosis as cysts, but several supplementary methods of exploration such as computed tomography, echography, RI, and sialography, etc. are being used in order to accurately grasp its range, depth, and relationship to the surrounding tissues. However, each of these exploration methods has special characteristics and do not develop the complete information available beyond a single method of exploration. Recently, MRI has been highlighted as a diagnostic tool for obtaining images of high contrast. We have been applying magnetic resonance equipment, the MMI 150 S, manufactured by Mitsubishi Co. to 56 patients with diseases in the oral region since September, 1987. In the present paper, we report our findings on MRI data with some consideration for supplementary methods of diagnosis available in 2 patients with cysts in the submental and submandibular regions as shown in the follwing:
In 2 patients with cysts as reported in the present paper, the morphology of the region with pathologic change was evidently depicted with markedly high intensity on T2 weighted images in qualitative terms, suggesting possible liquid content. The hyoid bone adjacent to the cyst was poorly depicted. Useful findings could be obtained for three-dimensional morphology and the positional relationship to the surrounding tissues by each tomographic image such as sagittal tomography, metopic tomography and horizontal tomography.
