Keywords:
Abdomen, Computer applications, CT-Quantitative, CT, Computer Applications-General, Technical aspects, Metabolic disorders, Endocrine disorders, Mesentery
Authors:
M. M. BARIS, A. PEKER, A. S. Yener, N. S. GEZER, M. Secil; Izmir/TR
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2018/C-2653
Conclusion
Fat measurement with QCT is a validated technique (5,
1,
6,
7,
8,
12).
On the other hand,
there are limitations in this method.
Due to defined HU limits for fat measurement,
there are falsely highlighted areas in the intestinal lumen.
These falsely highlighted areas are usually fecal material or liquid in intestinal lumen with intermediate density. To the best of our knowledge,
there is only one study in the literature that pays attention to these falsely highlighted areas.
Hung et al.
(15) were excluded all intestinal falsely highlighted areas manually while measuring visceral fat.
On the other hand in many studies (1,
8,
12,
13,
16,
17,
18 ) falsely highlighted area(mainly fecal material) exclusion was not performed.
Hung et al.’s study was the only article that performs this exclusion in the literature.
Same with fecal falsely highlighted areas,
fat in paraspinal muscles were included in fat measurement in some studies in the literature (12,8) and excluded in the study of Hung et al.
The main limitation of our study is lack of data about which method is more coherent with anthropometric measurements and reflects metabolic disorders more accurately.
On the other hand,
this study defines the borders of fat measurement method and correlation with anthropometric measurements is not one of our aims.
Also,
falsely highlighted fecal material surely cannot be included in fat measurement but so far many studies ignored this small amount beside large visceral fat.
Our study is the first research showing that even it is a small amount including falsely highlighted fecal material to visceral fat measurement would be a methodological mistake.
Including intestinal intraluminal falsely highlighted areas of visceral fat and including of paraspinal fat to subcutaneous fat cannot be ignored when performing abdominal fat measurement with QCT.