I have had MRI's of my neck (cervical) and my lower back (lumbar) regions, but I am also having lots of pain in my mid-back (thoracic.) It was determined that I have degenerative disc disease in my neck and osteoarthritis in my lower back. I kept asking about an MRI for my mid-back, and finally one orthopedist said that they usually don't do those because the ribs are in the way and the MRI's are hard to read. But I keep wondering what might be happening in the middle. How do doctors figure that out? I got the idea that they rarely even do surgery in that area because of having to work around the ribs. Anybody have experience with this?