BACKGROUND: The accurate diagnosis of early bone metastases plays an important role in treatment and prognosis. Bone biopsy is the gold standard for the diagnosis of bone metastases, but it is difficult to implement in clinical practice because of its invasive and small specimen size. In recent years, with the continuous development of magnetic resonance imaging technology, quantitative magnetic resonance imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance spectroscopy and based on chemical shift encoded magnetic resonance imaging have been widely used in the diagnosis of bone metastasis. The derived markers include table signal fat fraction and proton density fat fraction. All of them could reflect the bone marrow fat content. At present, the role of bone marrow fat in the development of bone metastases has become a new focus of attention. OBJECTIVE: To review the effect of bone marrow fat on bone metastasis and the quantitative evaluation techniques of magnetic resonance imaging, to summarize and compare the advantages and disadvantages of different magnetic resonance imaging fat quantification techniques in evaluating bone metastasis and their clinical applications. METHODS: The computer was used to search relevant literature in PubMed and CNKI database. Chinese and English search terms were “bone metastases, bone marrow adipocytes, magnetic resonance imaging, quantitative MRI, fat fraction, magnetic resonance spectrum, chemical shift encoding-based water-fat imaging.” A total of 67 relevant articles were obtained according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: (1) Bone marrow adipocytes can contribute to the occurrence of bone metastasis by secreting a variety of related hormones and cytokines, providing energy for tumor cells, and inducing osteoclast differentiation. (2) Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging can accurately quantify adipose tissue and measure the change of fat content in bone marrow, which is helpful for the diagnosis of bone metastasis. (3) Magnetic resonance spectroscopy can reflect different metabolites through different proton precession frequencies, so it can be used for fat quantification, and is currently used as an auxiliary test to evaluate metastatic fractures. (4) Chemical shift encoding-based water-fat imaging can separate water and fat signals in positive and inverse phases, so as to measure adipose tissue signals, with high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy in differentiating benign and malignant vertebral fractures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]