The initial stage of alveolar echinococcosis is a diagnostic challenge: a case report

One of the most important differential diagnoses of hepatic alveolar echinococcosis in the initial stage is liver metastases. Knowledge of the typical sonomorphology is essential to avoid misdiagnosis. In addition, proper localization of specimen collection within an alveolar echinococcosis initial lesion is critical to enable histopathologic diagnosis. Imaging and pathology are directly complementary, and imaging can point the way to the correct histopathologic diagnosis on the basis of lesion morphology. For this, knowledge of the specifics of alveolar echinococcosis in imaging and histomorphology is necessary to integratively combine the findings.