Answer
There is obviously some injury to Taryn's right leg. If she had a common leg fracture, the physical exam would have revealed it. Careful palpation of the leg apparently revealed some irregularities on the bone surface under the skin.. This caused the physician to suspect stress fractures.
Stress fractures are caused by microscopic breaks in bone; they does not damage adjacent tissues. Diagnostic imaging of such pathology is usually done by bone scan using a radioactive tracer and a scanning gamma ray camera.
Work Step by Step
After the tracer is given, the amount of radiation emitted by tissues is picked up by the camera and read on a monitor. The image form normal bone is uniform gray in color. So-called hot spots are dark in color and cold spots are light. Hot spots may indicate bone cancer, abnormal healing of a fracture, or abnormal bone growth. Areas of bone infection, osteoporosis/osteopenia, and rheumatoid arthritis record as light spots . Gamma ray bone scams are much more sensitive than ordinary x-ray exams. The latter would not reveal Taryn's lesions.
