This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Gregory, Jennifer. S., Barr, R. J., Varela, V., Ahearn, T. S., Gardiner, J. L., Gilbert, F. J., Redpath, T. W., Hutchison, J. D. and Aspden, R. M. (2017), MRI and the distribution of bone marrow fat in hip osteoarthritis. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging, 45: 42–50, which has been published in final form at doi:10.1002/jmri.25318. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.