Imaging of nonmalignant occupational lung disease

The radiologist plays an important partnership role in detecting presymptomatic disease in those at risk for occupational lung disease, contributing to the specificity of the diagnosis and recognizing sentinel events. Medicolegal roles for imaging include confirming the presence of a morphologic abnormality compatible with occupational lung disease, identifying other potential causes for disability, and determining the morphologic extent of disease. This article describes and illustrates the imaging appearance of a wide range of occupational lung diseases.