Objective To investigate the clinical and pathological features and MRI findings of gastrointestinal stromal tumors. Methods A total of 116 cases with gastrointestinal stromal tumors admitted in our hospital between January 2011 and July 2016 were selected as the study subjects and analyzed retrospectively. All patients underwent MRI examination. Based on the pathological results, the clinical features and differences in MRI findings between benign and malignant tumors were summarized. Results Among the 116 cases, 14 cases were benign, 29 were potential malignant, and 73 were malignant. The positive expression rate of CD117 was 98.3% and of CD34 was 59.0%. For 14 cases with benign lesions, plain scan of 22 cases showed homogeneous signal while plain scan of 73 cases with malignant tumors showed inhomogeneous signal. Patients with potential malignant tumors showed both homogeneous and inhomogeneous signal. The enhanced scan of benign tumors showed homogeneous and moderate enhancement while of the malignant ones showed inhomogeneous enhancement. Conclusion GIST is more common in population over 50 years old. Most of the patients have abdominal distension and pain, hematemesis, melena and other gastrointestinal bleeding symptoms. The pathological finding of benign tumors is little cystic degeneration, hemorrhage, necrosis and rare nuclear fission; Potential malignant tumors show cystic degeneration or hemorrhage, without tumor necrosis. Malignant tumor show cystic degeneration, hemorrhage, tumor necrosis, partial muscle invasion, blood vessel infiltration and nuclear fission more than 10 /50HPF. The MRI plain scan of benign tumors shows more homogeneous signal while of malignant tumors shows inhomogeneous signal. The enhanced scan shows inhomogeneous enhancement.