Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging in the diagnosis of spinal osteomyelitis.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (NMR) was performed on two patients whose clinical radiograph and bone scanning suggested spinal osteomyelitis before and after successful antimicrobial therapy. The images obtained suggest that NMR may be more useful in the diagnosis of this condition than other conventional imaging techniques. Hitherto NMR has not been considered particularly useful for the diagnosis of bone disease. This may be true for cortical bone, from which no signal is obtained using the NMR technique, but for medullary bone it appears to be a potentially useful, non-invasive and safe method of diagnosis.