Objective To analyze the clinical value of different magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning methods in the early diagnosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Methods 125 cases of patients diagnosed as nasopharyngeal carcinoma who were admitted between January 2016 and January 1818 were retrospectively analyzed. All patients were given dynamic enhanced imaging (DCE-MRI) and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) scans. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the two detection methods for nasopharyngeal carcinoma were compared by taking pathological results of biopsy as gold standard. Patients diagnosed as nasopharyngeal carcinoma were divided into dynamic enhanced imaging (DCE-MRI) group and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) group according to different MRI scanning methods. The biological differences between the two scanning methods for tumors were analyzed in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma and patients without nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Results The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of DCE-MRI with 0.969, 0.667 and 0.904 in the diagnosis of early nasopharyngeal carcinoma were higher than those of DWI with 0.867, 0.630 and 0.816. DWI scan results showed that different from the low signal of patients without pharyngeal carcinoma, the T2WI of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma showed moderate or high signal (P<0.05). The ADC value of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma was significantly lower than that of patients without nasopharyngeal carcinoma (P<0.05). The results of DCE-MRI scan showed that the volume transfer constant (Ktrans), Kep of contrast agent entering the blood vessels from the extracellular space (EES) per unit time, and the volume (Ve) of EES per unit volume in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma were significantly higher than those of patients without nasopharyngeal carcinoma (P<0.05). Conclusion Both DCE-MRI scan and DWI scan can have a certain degree of imaging diagnosis in the early nasopharyngeal carcinoma, but DCE-MRI has higher sensitivity, specificity and accuracy in the diagnosis of patients with early nasopharyngeal carcinoma.