Hepatobiliary Imaging

Liver pathologies are diagnosed by clinical, laboratory, and imaging data. The liver is a frequently involved organ in metastatic disease. Fluorine-18 (¹⁸F)-fluorodeoxy glucose (FDG) imaging takes advantage of elevated glucose metabolism in malignancies, a phenomenon known as the Warburg effect. This chapter discusses a variety of hepatobiliary cases of congenital, infective, inflammatory, neoplastic, vascular, and postsurgical abnormalities with the goal of demonstrating the utility of combination imaging with both nuclear and non-nuclear imaging techniques. ¹⁸F-FDG uptake in liver lesions has a high positive predictive value for malignancy, whereas ¹⁸F-FDG uptake in benign liver tumors is rare. Routine postsurgical anatomic changes encountered on imaging may present a challenge if the surgical history is unknown. Multiple cases in this chapter show that imaging findings across modalities synergistically improve interpretation.