Objective To summarize the clinical characteristics and MRI findings of the young and middle-aged with latent cerebrovascular malformation. Methods 28 patients with latent cerebrovascular malformation who were treated in our hospital between January 2011 and October 2015 were selected as the study objects. All patients underwent CT and MRI examination and were given corresponding treatment measures. The clinical characteristics of the disease were summarized and the diagnostic accurate rates of CT and MRI were compared. Results In the young and middle-aged patients with latent cerebrovascular malformation, male patients were significantly more than female ones and most of them were without history of hypertension. The main cause was intracranial spontaneous hemorrhage induced by cerebral malformation angiorrhexis. The main clinical manifestations were sudden headache and vomiting, physical handicaps, disturbance of consciousness, motor aphasia and so on. The diagnostic accuracy of CT (64.3%) was lower than that of MRI (89.3%) (χ2 =4.909, P=0.027). The main finding of CT scan of the lesions was equal and highly mixed-density signal with visible line-like calcification in lesions; After enhanced, there was little enhancement. MRI scan showed that 8 cases of T1WI presented equal, high, and low mixed signals and T2WI presented low, equal and highly mixed-density signals. The other 20 cases of T2WI presented equal and low mixed signals. On T2WI, there mainly were equal signals. Conclusions Compared with CT, MRI has the advantages of high resolution of soft tissues, which is beneficial to find the changes of the lesions and entorrhagia of latent cerebrovascular malformation at different stages. Besides, it is without mass effect and edema or unobvious. The sign characteristics of SWI sequences were obvious, with higher diagnostic accuracy and greater clinical value.