Abstract: Pulmonary tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of death from infectious diseases, and China is an annual incidence of about 1.3 million and a death toll of about 150 000. Therefore, early detection, diagnosis and effective treatment of patients have become the key to tuberculosis control. Routine examination modalities for tuberculosis includes DR, B-US, CT, MRI and PET-CT, in which DR and CT are most commonly used. However, due to radiation, especially for pregnant women, children, adolescents, and patients requiring short-term and repeated follow-up observations, there are potential safety risks. MRI has non-ionizing radiation and high soft tissue resolution. MRI showed excellent agreement with CT in detecting the imaging features of pulmonary tuberculosis (except for calcification). Moreover, MRI had advantages in the detection of liquefactive necrosis, caseous necrosis, mild pleural pleura thickening and slight hydrothorax compared with CT, which is helpful to differentiate active or inactive pulmonary tuberculosis, so it is worth more extensive application in clinical setting.

Key words: Pulmonary tuberculosis, Pulmonary tuberculoma, Magnetic resonance imaging, Examination, Diagnosis