rehab-lab

Data: If you had no back pain, what would your MRI say?

Chart data used in the essay, extracted from the values in the published page. No new data collected; see essay footnotes for full citations.

Files

• prevalence_by_age.csv — percent of asymptomatic (pain-free) people at each decade showing each finding. Four of the eight findings from Brinjikji Table 2 are shown in the essay.

Sources and access

• Brinjikji W, et al. Systematic Literature Review of Imaging Features of Spinal Degeneration in Asymptomatic Populations. AJNR. 2015;36:811-816. Table 2.
• Data extracted from the essay file on 2026-10-11.

Transformations

• Slider values between decades are linear interpolations added for the visualization; the source reports decade values only.
• “Asymptomatic” was defined heterogeneously across the 33 pooled studies (32 MRI, 1 CT).