CT and MR imaging of fatty tumors of the liver

The presence of fat in hepatic masses narrows the range of differential diagnoses down to hepatic angiomyolipoma, lipoma, adenoma, hepatoma, metastatic fatty tumors of the liver, focal fatty infiltration of the liver, and extrahepatic fatty masses such as intraperitoneal implants from malignant teratomas, and packed omentum. We report six hepatic tumors containing fat (lipoma, hepatocellular carcinoma, and calcified mass with fat-fluid level) with CT and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. The distribution of fat was diffuse in the lipomas and some hepatocellular carcinomas and localized in other hepatocellular carcinomas and fat-fluid masses. The density ranged from - 100 to 0 HU. High intensity areas on both T1- and T2-weighted MR images corresponded to the hypodense areas on CT.