Monitoring rehabilitation from soft tissue injuries

Magnetic resonance imaging has numerous advantages over other modalities for imaging of tendons and ligaments. Mainly it has high intrinsic contrast and resolution, particularly for soft tissues, resulting in good anatomic separation between different tissues. In addition, it can give information on the biochemical composition of tissues that may be useful in determining the stage of healing in an injured tendon or ligament. Ligament and tendon margins and symmetry are best evaluated on sequences that produce MR images with high anatomical detail, such as proton density (PD) and 3D spoiled gradient echo sequences. T2-weighted and short tau inversion recovery (STIR) images on the other hand have high fluid contrast making them useful for looking at fluid in tendon lesions ...