The anterolateral ligament of the knee – Visibility on magnetic resonance imaging☆

With great interest I have read the article “Anatomical study on the anterolateral ligament of the knee” in your journal.1 Meanwhile another morphological study by Claes et al.2 also reported regular occurrence of the anterolateral ligament of the knee. Together with the data of Vincent et al., these three studies have examined 57 anatomical specimen and found the anterolateral ligament in 56 of them (98.2%).1–3 Given the probable clinical impact on outcome after surgery of the anterior cruciate ligament preoperative judgment of its integrity would be desirable. To study the visibility on standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the knee 30 randomly selected knee MRIs from the departmental PACS were reviewed (5 women, 25 men, mean age 38.9 years). Imaging was performed on an outpatient basis using different scanners with a field strength of 1.0 or 1.5 T. According to the reported localization of the anatomic studies coronal images seemed most appropriate