This is a retrospective study with the objective of assessing the appearance and detectability of bile duct calculi on axial abdominal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Axial spin-echo (SE) T1-weighted and Turbo-spin-echo (TSE) T2-weighted images of the upper abdomen of 23 patients suffering from acute cholangitis with known bile duct calculi were retrospectively analysed. Bile duct calculi could be visualized on a T1-weighted SE sequence in 10 (47%) patients. T2-weighted TSE images identified bile duct calculi in 20 (87%) patients. On the T1-weighted sequence, eight out of 10 (80%) visualized common duct stones were slightly hyperintense compared to bile. On T2-weighted sequence, 27 out of 34 (79%) detectable common duct stones were uniformly hypointense compared to bile, but seven stones (21%) had mixed signal intensity.