Opportunistic Screening at Abdominal CT: Use of Automated Body Composition Biomarkers for Added Cardiometabolic Value

Body composition assessment: comparison of quantitative values between magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography

“…Body composition assessment is gaining increasing attention in many clinical settings, because of its role in metabolism of drugs, advent of therapy complications, cardiovascular and metabolic risk (4,23). Sarcopenia is a condition characterized by loss of muscle mass and muscle strength.…”

“…The CT scan offers a good evaluation for body composition analysis, thanking its accuracy in quantification of muscle and fat, and its fast acquisition. In the oncological setting, where patients are usually evaluated over time by CT (25-28) a retrospective evaluation of skeletal muscle from clinical CT examinations is indeed an opportunistic source of significant information regarding sarcopenia and fat distribution (23). In these patients CT scan offers also the opportunity to assess the attenuation values of muscle and fat, which give information about the functional status of these tissues.…”

Cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality risk prediction from abdominal CT using deep learning

“…9, 27, 28 Abdominal CT are rich with biomarkers known to be relevant to cardiovascular risk such as visceral fat and aortic plaque. 29, 30 This is the first work to feed the entire abdominal CT scan into a deep learning model.…”

“…9,27,28 Abdominal CT are rich with biomarkers known to be relevant to cardiovascular risk such as visceral fat and aortic plaque. 29,30…”

Automated CT-Based Body Composition Analysis: A Golden Opportunity

“…Cross-sectional body imaging can provide valuable objective data on internal tissues and organs. In particular, CT scans can quantify bone mineral density, visceral and subcutaneous fat, skeletal muscle, liver fat, and arterial vascular calcification, amongst other organ-based assessments [ 1 2 ]. When these body composition measures are incidental to the clinical indication for imaging, their consideration has been referred to as “opportunistic screening” [ 3 ].…”