Introduction

Headache can be a symptom of a multitude of disorders. While many of these diseases have no identifiable abnormalities on CT or MRI scanning, neuroimaging is invaluable in the diagnosis of many pathologic causes for secondary headaches. These include: intracranial hemorrhage brain tumors vascular lesions hydrocephalus traumatic abnormalities This tutorial will review the role of imaging when clinicians suspect one of these diagnoses. In addition, we will discuss which imaging studies are of most value in particular clinical scenarios. Neuroimaging will detect several important pathologic causes of headache including various types of intracranial hemorrhage. These include subarachnoid, epidural and subdural hemorrhages, and of course intraparenchymal hemorrhage. Intracranial hemorrhage can arise from a variety of disease states, including hypertension, rupture of a cerebral aneurysm, an arteriovenous malformation, trauma, infection and brain tumors.