I was just on a call with an injured runner who had what she thought was a stress fracture.  We were talking about the way bone stress injury shows up on an MRI. We all would like to believe MRI creates a perfect picture.

It is true that there is a tremendous amount of images and information that you can get from an MRI, but you have to understand that most of the imaging of bone on MRI is not really looking for a crack. 

It's looking for trouble in the form of inflammation or edema within the bone. So, I thought it might be useful to talk about the three types of inflammation or edema that you can see in a bone on an MRI.

What are the three types of bone edema on MRI in a runner with a stress fracture? 

Well, that is what we're talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.