Well, you've already gotten lots of great answers, but I will throw out my experience. I had one MRI with Dr. Nezhat that didn't show anything. Then I had one about 9 months later ordered by Dr. Seckin. I had my first surgery with him. His MRI showed that my bowel was adhered in an abnormal way and that my ovaries weren't moving properly either. This led the report to say 'suspicious for endo' but I think this is because the radiologist is highly trained and looks for these changes. I suspect Dr. Seckin has worked with him for a long time, because I was only allowed to have the MRI at a location where this doctor read them. So overall, it's pretty rare IMHO for an MRI to show anything. It's only because I was full of peritoneal endo with adhesions that anything showed up. Dr. Seckin doesn't even use the staging system; he said it doesn't fully describe all the types of endo and changes in the body that women can have.

No, the only thing it showed was the huge “mass” (they upgraded it to that post MRI). It was done without contrast but like Abby said, I hear that endo is very rarely found on MRI. It’d be awesome if it was but laparoscopy is the way to go. If you get an excision doc, they can excise the endo at the same time.

PS I also had five or so ultrasounds for this in 2018 and it showed nothing but the mass.

Thank you for sharing @A MyEndometriosisTeam Member
Based on all the answers I'll definitely have more than one doctor checking the scans. And I suppose that might be more useful to identify how the internal anatomy might be affected rather than being able to see the endo itself. Great to know, thank you ladies!

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A MyEndom...

No, the mass was the endometrioma. It started out with being called a “cyst” then got upgraded to “mass”, which scared me more that it was cancer. The final diagnosis of that bundle of fun was “endometrioma”. :)

Thank you a lot ladies!
Oh dear, based on your experiences it doesn't leave much hope that the MRI would be very helpful.
I already had a lap that confirmed stage 4 endo. Unfortunately the surgeon was not amazing.. She didn't take any photos or videos during the surgery and her notes are not great either.. So now that I changed the doctor, he would like to see what's going inside possibly without additional lap to prepare for a potential second op.
@A MyEndometriosisTeam Member I suppose the 'mass' they found was the adhesions? How did they explain that?

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