Abstract #2293

Kalra M, O'Brien K, Schmithorst V, Rajagopal A, Dardzinski B

About 15 % of children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are obese; a 200% increase over the past two decades. The amount of visceral fat is associated with other co-morbidities e.g., cardiac disease, diabetes, and sleep apnea. MR imaging can quantify the amount of subcutaneous and intra-abdominal fat noninvasively. Forty two obese children referred for sleep apnea had MR imaging of the abdomen. Automatic and manual segmentation of the adipose tissue distribution was performed. The two techniques agreed to within 5%. The automatic technique was at least 20 times faster than the method with user intervention.