Featuring Dr. Audrey Spielmann, MD, Radiologist

Duration: 1 minute

Ankle injuries are very common in sports. The most common type of injury is an inversion-type injury or twisting over on your ankle.  That’s frequently seen with running, with any soccer, football, rugby, tennis and racquet sports as well when people twist over on their ankle. 

MRI is the best modality to look at the ligaments and the tendons around the ankle and also to look for bone marrow edema, which can’t be identified with CT or ultrasound. And so here is an example of an ankle MRI on somebody who has had an injury to the ligament, and this structure right here is the anterior tibiofibular ligament, which normally should be attached onto the bone right here. And we can see that it’s completely detached, and there is fluid within the joint. 

This bright material here highlighting the detached ligament. MRI visualizes the ligaments, the tendons and also the bone for bone marrow edema and the bone to assess for bone marrow edema. All of these structures and features are best seen with MRI, and if you have any questions about MRI, contact your family doctor, your sports medicine specialist or an imaging center.