Introduction

In December 2019, an outbreak caused by a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), now named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), occurred in China and has rapidly spread all over the world causing a pandemic. The disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 was named COVID-19. In Europe, the first case was reported in the Lombardy region. Although soon after all Italian regions reported patients with COVID-19, the highest number of cases was in Eastern Lombardy, specifically in the Bergamo’s province with 11,313 confirmed COVID-19 patients up to April 30th 2020. For this reason, we decide to explore the known CNS manifestation of this virus, showing the “typical” MRI aspect. In this Atlas we will show real cases we faced in the first wave period between March and May 2020. COVID-19 may affect CNS presenting with typical or atypical patterns, nowadays we are trying to define what is typical and what it is not. Therefore, we have separated chapters according to different types of presentation (vascular lesions, inflammatory lesions and so on) and for this reason some topics will be treated extensively in the first chapter and more shortly in each specific other chapter.