Diffusion-weighted imaging and demyelinating diseases: new aspects of an old advanced sequence.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to discuss classic applications in diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in demyelinating disease and progression of DWI in the near future. CONCLUSION: DWI is an advanced technique used in the follow-up of demyelinating disease patients, focusing on the diagnosis of a new lesion before contrast enhancement. With technical advances, diffusion-tensor imaging; new postprocessing techniques, such as tract-based spatial statistics; new ways of calculating diffusion, such as kurtosis; and new applications for DWI and its spectrum are about to arise.