Aim To investigate the application value of high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging technology of three-dimensional volumetric isotropic turbo spin echo acquisition (3D-VISTA) on detecting cerebral microbleeds (CMB). Methods 65 patients with cerebral amyloid angiopathy were retrospectively analyzed and carefully observed. In addition, all images were analyzed, and sieved from the class of being qualified and above. The present study detects the CMB by comparing two techniques to the “golden standard” susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI), in order to assess the coherence of those techniques. And all CMBs were assessed by partitions and graded. Results Some cases of patients could not be applied because the images were unqualified, and the number of GRE sequence, SWI sequence and 3D-VISTA sequence were 6,2 and 38, which could be applied. The results of 3D-VISTA sequence and SWI sequence had high consistency on detecting CMB of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) patients, and the Kappa value was 0.6113.Conclusions The high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging technology of 3D-VISTA had expressed high accuracy in the diagnosis of CMB of CAA patients. The proposed technique of 3D-VISTA can be applied to detect the CAA, and it provides a useful noninvasive method for the diagnosis of CAA.