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Abstract #1271

Software for Fully Automatic Quantification of Abdominal Fat with Manual Correction Option: Evaluation in Morbidly Obese Patients

Gregor Thrmer1, Henriette Helene Bertram1, Veronika Peter2, Tatjana Schtz2, Edward Shang2, Matthias Blher3, Thomas Kahn1, Harald Busse1

1Dept. of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Leipzig University Hospital, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany; 2Dept. of Visceral, Transplantation, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery, Section Bariatric Surgery, Leipzig University Hospital, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany; 3Dept. of Endocrinology and Nephrology, Leipzig University Hospital, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany


The risk of obesity-related diseases can be assessed by MRI estimates of the abdominal fat distribution. Computer-assisted techniques can be used for rapid image segmentation, but any unsupervised analysis is prone to errors caused by anatomical variations and artifacts, in particular for advanced stages of obesity. A custom-made software with a user interface for the rapid inspection of automatically segmented images was evaluated on the example of 20 extremely obese patients (mean BMI=44 kg/m2) and compared to manual processing by two observers. The presented software appears to be promising for accurate and time-effective fat quantification and larger segmentation errors can be easily corrected in the graphical user environment.