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Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 1.5 T was performed in 25 extracranial haematomas using spin-echo (SE) and fast-field-echo (FFE) sequences. The age of the haematomas was in 11 cases less than 2 days and in 9 cases more than 14 days. Fresh haematomas were isointense to skeletal muscle on T1-weighted SE images. With T2-weighted SE sequences, fresh haematomas had high signal intensity on the first day, but became inhomogeneous with predominantly low signal intensity on the following days. Areas of low signal intensity could be demonstrated by T2-weighted FFE sequences already on the first day after bleeding. Subacute haematomas were recognised by their high signal intensity on the T1-weighted SE images. Also with T2-weighted SE and FFE sequences, subacute haematomas showed increasingly high signal intensity. The characteristic appearance of haematomas facilitates their identification with MRI.