Marrow: red, yellow and bad

Bone marrow is one of the largest and most dynamic tissues in the body, and it is well-depicted on conventional MRI sequences. However, often only perfunctory attention is paid to the bone marrow on musculoskeletal imaging studies, raising the risk of delayed or missed diagnoses. To guide appropriate recognition of normal variants and pathological processes involving the marrow compartment, this article describes and depicts the physiological spatiotemporal pattern of conversion of hematopoietic red marrow to fatty yellow marrow during childhood and adolescence, and the characteristic imaging findings of disorders involving marrow hyperplasia/reconversion, marrow infiltration/deposition and marrow depletion/failure.