Delayed knee pain - possible Chondromalacia Patellae

[Excili]

Good morning gcoe, your reply was most welcome.
I attached my x-ray for you, which should answer a few questions, but unfortunately I wasn't given the angle you hoped for (found out too late myself), and I was planning on having another x-ray just for it. Also I've shown the x-rays images to other people too and apparently they aren't the best of quality in their digital form, but should be better than nothing.

I consulted another doctor yesterday, he said he could see on the right leg, the bone under the kneecap was visually more worn out than the left leg's.

Now on to other quesions:
Misshapen patella: Can you judge that by the x-ray?
Q-angle: if I just look at my legs, it visually seems as if they do indeed have a Q-angle, but I'm not experienced enough to tell if its just some mass imbalance between my inner-outter thigh. X-ray should be enough to figure that.
Yes, my VMO was weak, at least visually. Now it has somewhat more mass.
Yes, if I go as heavy as I can on leg extensions, my knee actually hurts on the spot. that's why I turned to the closed-chain Terminal knee extention, and I intend to keep it that way
Lateral tightness, well, I'm not sure if I did have it, but I purchased a foam roller a week ago and have been rolling my quads/hams/glutes 2-3 times a week. First few time I rolled I would get pain in knees similar to the one I get from actually training. I guess I did hit some trigger points.

Have the knee cap assessed for poor tracking

Is there a way to find that out without the skyline(/sunrise) x-ray? Some sort of test? Combined with my visually confusing Q-angle, it almost appears that the patella is tracking outwards, but I can't say I got an experienced eye for this.

Tight/Overactive Hamstrings

Hmm, could you explain how that would affect the knee? I do stretch and foam oll the hamstring though, so it should be ok.

Now on to the popping/cracking stuff:
The popping won't hurt me right when it's happening, but if I try and pop 5-6 times consecutively and I stop, I get this numbness in my knee, as if you were pouring menthol in it actually. So its not exactly a direct-pain thing, just about same irritance as the other things I do to my knee.
Now, I wouldn't panic so much about the popping, if it wasn't for the fact that I didn't get it in the past.

Another type of cracking I didn't mention:
Suppose I sit down, straighten my leg to full extension, and keep trying to extend it so my knee is completely locked, and my quad flexed. Now I relax my leg, and as soon as the knee unlocks, there's a cracking sound while the patellae releases. This doesnt happen all the time, but its quite often.
A note: this test doesnt work if I try the same, but closed chained, with my feet on the ground. No cracking whatsoever like that (negative, seems like it does happen with closed chain movement too). It does happen if I walk though, while the foot rolls over and my leg bents to make the next step, i'll feel the cracking. No pain again, and this one doesn't actually give delayed pain either. It's probably a not-much-information case, but I thought I'd explain it in case it helps somewhere.

I'm getting my MRI today (only on the right knee but should be ok, since right one seems slightly more worn out than the left), hoping it completes my knee image and we can sort it out.

One last thing I forgot to write about on my initial post: after exercising the quads I do get this crunching feeling like my patella is rubbing against something.

And a final question. What would you recommend as anti-inflammatory, and what is wrong with inflammation exactly (appart from the painful part)? I guess swelling would be a bad thing, but I don't see it happening in my knee, at least not to a great extent (I do feel sometimes like my knee is thicker or something)