Objective To study MRI manifestations and characteristics of the primary intracranial lymphoma, in order to improve the level of diagnosis and differential diagnosis. Methods A retrospective analysis of MRI was performed in 10 patients with pathologically proven primary intracranial lymphoma. Results 9 cases were solitary lesions, the other case was multiple lesions, among these cases, tumors were often located in deep brain or the adjacent meninges. In detail, the tumor localization of these cases included the frontal lobe (n=2), corpus callosum (n=2), meningeal near (n=2), occipital lobe (n=1), central district (n=1), infratentorial brain (n=1), multiple (n=1). MRI scan was slightly low or equal signal on T1WI, T2WI was equal or higher signal. The mass effect of tumor was lightly, most cases were mild to moderate edema, only one was severe edema. In this study, 7 cases were characterized by typical umbilicus sign, spike sign, lobular sign, fist sign, open-loop sign. Conclusion There were certain characteristics about imaging manifestations of primary intracranial malignant lymphoma, and MRI plays a significant role in its localized and qualitative diagnosis.