Benign lesions in cirrhosis

The accurate diagnosis of benign lesions in a cirrhotic liver is clearly important to avoid misdiagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or other malignancies and to direct the patient toward the most appropriate management. In this chapter we review the appearance of the most common benign lesions encountered on CT and MR imaging of a cirrhotic liver. The lesions are divided into two main groups depending on the histological composition as non-hepatocellular lesions (i.e., cysts and peribiliary cysts, hemangiomas, pseudolesions) and hepatocellular lesions (i.e., nonmalignant cirrhosis-associated nodules, focal nodular hyperplasia like nodules, and hepatobiliary hypointense nodules without arterial phase hyperenhancement).