Assessment of Myosteatosis on Computed Tomography by Automatic Generation of a Muscle Quality Map Using a Web-Based Toolkit: Feasibility Study.
JMIR Med Inform
; 8(10): e23049, 2020 Oct 19.
Article
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| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-33074159
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Muscle quality is associated with fatty degeneration or infiltration of the muscle, which may be associated with decreased muscle function and increased disability.OBJECTIVE:
The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of automated quantitative measurements of the skeletal muscle on computed tomography (CT) images to assess normal-attenuation muscle and myosteatosis.METHODS:
We developed a web-based toolkit to generate a muscle quality map by categorizing muscle components. First, automatic segmentation of the total abdominal muscle area (TAMA), visceral fat area, and subcutaneous fat area was performed using a predeveloped deep learning model on a single axial CT image at the L3 vertebral level. Second, the Hounsfield unit of each pixel in the TAMA was measured and categorized into 3 components normal-attenuation muscle area (NAMA), low-attenuation muscle area (LAMA), and inter/intramuscular adipose tissue (IMAT) area. The myosteatosis area was derived by adding the LAMA and IMAT area. We tested the feasibility of the toolkit using randomly selected healthy participants, comprising 6 different age groups (20 to 79 years). With stratification by sex, these indices were compared between age groups using 1-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Correlations between the myosteatosis area or muscle densities and fat areas were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient r.RESULTS:
A total of 240 healthy participants (135 men and 105 women) with 40 participants per age group were included in the study. In the 1-way ANOVA, the NAMA, LAMA, and IMAT were significantly different between the age groups in both male and female participants (P≤.004), whereas the TAMA showed a significant difference only in male participants (male, P<.001; female, P=.88). The myosteatosis area had a strong negative correlation with muscle densities (r=-0.833 to -0.894), a moderate positive correlation with visceral fat areas (r=0.607 to 0.669), and a weak positive correlation with the subcutaneous fat areas (r=0.305 to 0.441).CONCLUSIONS:
The automated web-based toolkit is feasible and enables quantitative CT assessment of myosteatosis, which can be a potential quantitative biomarker for evaluating structural and functional changes brought on by aging in the skeletal muscle.
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Bases de datos:
MEDLINE
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En
Revista:
JMIR Med Inform
Año:
2020
Tipo del documento:
Article