Role of MRI in spine pathologied including back pain

The pain with spinal origin including back pain is one of the most reasons for clinical admission in modern anddeveloping countries. Imaging and specially MRI has a key role in finding the etiology and source of the painwhich is needed for the clinician to take good steps to manage the condition.The ability of magnetic resonance imaging in study of the soft tissue is the crucial point to make itincomparable with other modalities including Xray or CT scan.Among the etiologies and pain sources some with more frequency will be classified and discussed in thislecture. Degenerative pathologies, trauma related injuries , infectious and neoplastic lesions ,developmentalanomalies, and rheumatologic conditions are among which will be explained.MRI sequences and imaging findings in each sequence and also usefulness and efficacy of magneticresonance imaging in each pathology are the topics that should be considered.Applying IV contrast in some cases will be helpful and in some cases is necessary but there are also somecases that IV contrast doesn't help and should be avoided.The precise mechanism and MRI physics is out of scope of the course but brief and essential points will beprovided to help the clinician to choose the better imaging modalities to approach the spinal pathologies.