Magnetic resonance--guided musculoskeletal interventional radiology.

Overview

As an imaging modality, magnetic resonance (MR) guidance has great potential to direct diagnostic and therapeutic procedures performed in the musculoskeletal region and influence patient management. MR-guided interventional procedures involving bone, soft tissue, intervertebral discs, and joints are safe and sufficiently effective for use in clinical practice. This article discusses and illustrates the procedural characteristics and techniques when performing MR-guided musculoskeletal interventions. Biopsy procedures are similar to other modalities for bone and soft tissue lesions. MR guidance is advantageous if the lesion is not visible by other modalities and for regions adjacent to hardware and implants, subselective targeting, intra-articular locations, and periarticular cyst aspiration. MR guidance has also been used for a host of spine injections and pain management procedures such as sacroiliac joint injections, discography, transforaminal epidural injection, selective nerve block, sympathetic block, celiac plexus block, and facet joint cryotherapy neurotomies. Future directions of clinical applications include tumor ablation and multimodality procedure suites. MR-guided musculoskeletal procedures will continue to be a growth area particularly for the diagnosis and treatment of bone and soft tissue neoplasia.