CAT - Radiography versus magnetic resonance imaging to predict the cause of foot lameness

The aim of this presentation is to review the studies that have looked at the comparison between radiography and MRI for the diagnosis of foot lameness and to try and determine which imaging modality provides the most information. The quality of the evidence is relatively poor, when considering the evidence pyramid, with the majority of studies being retrospective and/or case series with only a few having a control population. Some use only descriptive analysis with no real statistical evaluation and only one study used computer-derived systems for analysis of data. With the advent of MRI we have been able to specifically diagnose multiple different lesions within the foot, which may or may not be attributable to lameness. Many of these lesions are present concurrently and therefore the author did not feel it was appropriate to look at one specific lesion in isolation. However, this results in a relatively limited number of studies looking at any one individual lesion in detail ...