Seventeen patients with intracerebral hemorrhagic lesions were examined with magnetic resonance imaging atboth 2.0T and 0.5T, in order to evaluate the capability of detecting and characterizing the hemorrhagic lesions ateach field strength and to compare the signal intersities of the hemorrhages between both fied strengths. Theintervals between two imagings were within 2 hours in all patients except for 4 patients with subacute hematomaand occult cerebrovascular malformations in whom the intervals were 1 to 4 days. At each field strength, both T1and T2-weighted spin echo(SE) images were obtained in all patients. All the hemorrhagic lesions were readilydetectd and characterized as hemorrhagic lesions at 2.0T, whereas one lesion of chronic hemorrhage was notdetected, and three lesions(one acute hemorrhage, one chronic hemorrhage and one occult cerebrovascularmalformation) could not be characterized as hemorrhagic lesions at 0.5T. There were statistically significantdifferences in signal intensity of the hematomas between 2.0T and 0.5T on proton density-weighted and T2-weightedimages in cases of acute intracerebral hematomas : the hematomas seen as low intensity at 2.0T appeared iso-orslightly high at 0.5T. In conclusion, the itracerebral hematomas may be difficult to detect and to characterizewith SE technique at 0.5T, and then the gradient echo technique may be useful at 0.5T.