PURPOSE: To determine the usefulness of fat saturation fast spin-echo T2WI for patients with mild acute trauma of the spine. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Between July 1998 and June 2002, 36 patients with acute spinal trauma underwent MRI within four months of injury. One, whose clinal symptoms indicated neurological paralysis, was excluded form our study. A superconductive 1.0-T MRI scanner was used, and conventional T1W1, T2WI, and additional fat-saturation fast spin-echo T2WI were performed. Two radiologists compared conventional T2-weighted sagittal imaging and fat-saturation T2-weighted sagittal imaging in terms of the extension of increased high signal intensities in soft tissue and vertebral bodies, bone marrow signal change, disk herniation, and signal change of the disk. RESULTS: The detection rate of focal high signal intensities in soft tissue and bone marrow was significantly higher at fat-saturation fast spin-echo T2WI than at conventional T2WI. CONCLUSION: Fat-saturation fast spin-echo T2WI is useful for the evaluation of patients with mild acute spinal trauma without neurological impairment.