The hand packs nineteen bones and dozens of tendons, pulleys, and small joints into a space you can hold in your other palm, which is exactly why a hand report reads so densely. Drop a rendered hand or finger X-ray, MRI, or CT series into the analyzer and a four-model AI panel walks each digit in turn, translating radiology shorthand into plain sentences you can actually use before your next appointment.
Every file is parsed and displayed on your own device first. Only the rendered frames the analyzer produces are sent onward for review, so the original DICOM series for your hand never leaves your browser. What comes back is meant to help you understand your own imaging, not to replace the hand surgeon or radiologist who examines you directly.
A jammed or crushed finger is almost never imaged with a film of the whole hand. Instead, the clinic orders a dedicated three-view series of just the injured digit, because a single overview shot of all five rays blurs the fine joint spacing and small avulsion fragments that matter most at the fingertip and knuckle. When the thumb takes a sideways load — a ski pole, a fall onto an outstretched thumb, a tackle — stress views are added, gently angling the joint under load to see whether the ulnar collateral ligament has stretched, partially torn, or fully ruptured with the ligament end flipped outside the adductor aponeurosis, a pattern known as a Stener lesion.
Tendon, pulley, and ligament questions that plain film cannot answer move to MRI, almost always run through a small dedicated hand or wrist coil rather than a general body coil, because the structures being hunted — an A2 pulley, a flexor tendon sheath, a collateral ligament at a proximal interphalangeal joint — are only a few millimeters across. When a fracture through a metacarpal shaft or base involves the joint surface itself, CT steps in to map the fragment angles and comminution in three dimensions before a surgeon plans fixation, something a flat X-ray series can only hint at.
For a walkthrough of what a hand series actually shows, start with how to read a hand X-ray, then compare the injury patterns that most often produce a confusing report: finger fracture, finger dislocation, mallet finger, thumb UCL tear, and finger pulley injury.
Once a hand or finger study is rendered, four independently trained models each trace every metacarpal and phalanx, the small joints between them, and the visible tendons and pulleys, flagging fracture lines, joint subluxation, soft-tissue swelling, and signal changes suggesting a ligament or tendon tear. Their separate read-outs are then cross-checked against one another, so a subtle finding only one model notices — a hairline avulsion at the base of a phalanx, say — is weighted differently than a fracture all four agree on at a glance.
The plain-language report that comes back turns hand-specific shorthand into something a non-clinician can follow: instead of “volar plate avulsion at the PIP joint,” it explains that the small ligament cushioning the underside of the middle knuckle has pulled a chip of bone free, and why that changes whether the finger gets buddy-taped or splinted in extension. The aim is to help you understand your own scan while you wait for a hand surgeon, not to substitute for that visit.
Confidence varies with which structure is in question. A displaced metacarpal fracture on a well-positioned X-ray produces a clear, high-agreement read across all four models, while a partial A2 pulley tear on a motion-degraded MRI or an early trigger finger nodule can produce more disagreement between models — disagreement the report calls out rather than smoothing into one falsely confident number.
Most hand referrals fall into a handful of recognizable groups. Fractures and dislocations account for the largest share: metacarpal shaft and neck fractures from a closed-fist punch, phalangeal fractures from a door or a sporting collision, and dislocations at the knuckle or the smaller finger joints that can look deceptively minor on the outside. Ligament injuries center on the thumb's ulnar collateral ligament, where a full tear with a Stener lesion needs surgical repair rather than a splint, unlike a partial sprain that heals with immobilization alone.
Tendon and pulley injuries form their own cluster: mallet finger from a jammed fingertip that ruptures the extensor tendon at the last joint, jersey finger from a grabbed jersey that avulses the flexor tendon at its attachment, and the climbers' pulley rupture that produces a sudden pop and bowstringing when a flexor tendon pulls away from bone during a crimp grip. Triggering and tenosynovitis, where a tendon catches or locks as it passes through an inflamed sheath, and Dupuytren disease, where thickened cords in the palm slowly draw a finger into flexion, both progress gradually rather than from a single injury. Ganglion cysts near the wrist or finger joints and arthritis at the small finger joints or the base of the thumb round out the remaining referrals, both more about chronic change than acute trauma.
If your report names a specific structure — a metacarpal, a phalanx, the thumb UCL, an A2 pulley, or a small joint affected by arthritis — the condition pages linked above walk through what that finding typically looks like on X-ray and MRI. Bringing the plain-language summary alongside your original images to the hand surgeon or hand therapist tends to shorten that first conversation and focus it on the decisions that actually matter for your recovery.
Nothing on this page or in the AI report is a diagnosis, and it does not replace a hand surgeon or a radiologist reading your actual study. Some hand and finger presentations need urgent, in-person evaluation rather than a scan review at home: a finger that looks pale, cold, or numb compared with its neighbors, an open wound over a knuckle or joint — including a bite injury, which carries a high infection risk even when small — spreading redness with pain when the finger is passively stretched, or numbness that is rapidly getting worse rather than staying steady. Those signs can point toward compromised blood flow, a joint-space infection, or a flexor tendon sheath infection, all of which race against the clock in ways a home scan review cannot.
Short of those red flags, most hand findings are safe to review at your own pace. A stable phalangeal fracture, an early trigger finger, or a small ganglion cyst rarely changes hour to hour, so taking time to understand the terms in a report before your appointment is reasonable. The line to watch is a sudden change — new coldness, new spreading redness, or numbness that worsens quickly — which should prompt an urgent call rather than waiting on an AI read of a scan.
Upload your hand or finger imaging for private, AI-powered explanation.
Start AnalysisOur AI consortium reviews hand and finger imaging for 13 conditions, spanning metacarpal and phalangeal fractures, finger dislocations, thumb UCL tears with or without a Stener lesion, mallet finger, jersey finger, pulley injuries, trigger finger, Dupuytren disease, ganglion cysts, and arthritis of the small joints and thumb base. Results are educational and not a clinical diagnosis.
Because a single view of the whole hand compresses each finger down to a fraction of the image, hiding the fine joint-space narrowing and small avulsion fragments a dedicated three-view series of just the injured digit can show clearly. When a full hand series is already available, the panel still reviews it, but a targeted digit series usually yields a sharper read.
It can flag the imaging features that distinguish them — ligament thickening and intact continuity in a sprain versus a displaced ligament end sitting outside the adductor aponeurosis in a Stener lesion — but confirming a Stener lesion in practice usually relies on stress views or MRI reviewed directly by a hand surgeon, since the treatment paths diverge sharply between splinting and surgical repair.
X-ray shows bones and joint alignment but not tendons or pulleys directly, so it mainly rules out an associated avulsion fracture. MRI through a small dedicated hand coil is what actually visualizes a torn A2 pulley, a ruptured flexor or extensor tendon, or bowstringing, which is why tendon and pulley questions usually move to MRI once a fracture has been excluded.
No. The analysis is an educational aid for understanding imaging words and visible patterns. Hand treatment decisions require clinical examination, function testing, and review by qualified clinicians.
No. Your browser parses and renders the DICOM series locally, and only the rendered frames are sent onward for AI review. The original hand or finger imaging files stay on your own device throughout.