Acute and chronic bowel pathologies can often be mistaken for manifestations of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and there are many entities with imaging and clinical features that overlap with IBD, making diagnosis difficult. We describe multiple inflammatory, infectious, neoplastic, and vascular entities with imaging and clinical features that may mimic IBD, and highlight differentiating features to assist in diagnosis., Competing Interests: Declarations. Conflict of interest: All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)