ABSTRACT
This study was conducted on 20 patients with early rheumatoid arthritis with disease duration less than one year in order to detect early joint changes by using Magnetic Resonance Imaging [M R I] for the wrist, hand and knee. At the same time patients had: 1- Full clinical assessment with stress on swollen joint count, pain score, Ritchie articular index. 2-Standard laboratory investigations including C.B.C, ESR, CRP and RF. 3- Plain X-rays on the same joints for all patients. From our results we could find that a high proportion of patients with early rheumatoid arthritis develop joint changes which can be detected with MRI in the absence of significant clinical symptoms or radiological signs in the examined joints. So MRI is useful as an early indicator to determine the patients who require aggressive treatment early to guard against poor out come of the disease