I’ve had an issue on and off with my knee for over a year. Finally thought it was good and a dog blew into my knee making it go outwards. Had a mri and the report reads a focal point on the lateral meniscus or possible artifact. Can’t get into see my ortho for another ten days. I can run if I keep my knee taped and ice afterwards. I will have some pain the next day but not a ton. I guess I’m confused what the difference is between a focal and artifact is. Also, they said there was a tunnel cyst. I had my acl done 21 years ago and there isn’t much info on it out there.Any other experiences with this?
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seadocha wrote:
I’ve had an issue on and off with my knee for over a year. Finally thought it was good and a dog blew into my knee making it go outwards. Had a mri and the report reads a focal point on the lateral meniscus or possible artifact. Can’t get into see my ortho for another ten days. I can run if I keep my knee taped and ice afterwards. I will have some pain the next day but not a ton. I guess I’m confused what the difference is between a focal and artifact is. Also, they said there was a tunnel cyst. I had my acl done 21 years ago and there isn’t much info on it out there.Any other experiences with this?I'm a physician but not an ortho doc or radiologist. I do a lot of imaging in my practice and can tell you that an artifact can show up on almost any type of image in medicine.
An artifact is basically an area that you are not sure if it's an actual lesion or simply some type of artificial blemish. Sometimes, you can easily tell if it's an artifact......it would be like if you took a pic but knew there was a smudge on the lens. When you looked at the picture, you'd see a blurred area that corresponded to the smudge area. That's an artifact. If you saw the blurred area, on the pic, but found no smudge on the lens then that blurred part of the pic could be caused by a "focal point" of actual distraction in the scene you are taking.........let's say there was fog on one side of the scene so that's actually there and not a false positive.