# Automated segmentation of 3-D body composition on computed tomography

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.08968 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08968/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Dec 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [UNet++: A Nested U-Net Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10165/) (2018)
- [The state of the art in kidney and kidney tumor segmentation in contrast-enhanced CT imaging: Results of the KiTS19 Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01054/) (2019)
- [Fully-automated Body Composition Analysis in Routine CT Imaging Using 3D Semantic Segmentation Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10776/) (2020)
- [Fully-Automated Analysis of Body Composition from CT in Cancer Patients Using Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.03844/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Purpose: To develop and validate a computer tool for automatic and simultaneous segmentation of body composition depicted on computed tomography (CT) scans for the following tissues: visceral adipose (VAT), subcutaneous adipose (SAT), intermuscular adipose (IMAT), skeletal muscle (SM), and bone. Approach: A cohort of 100 CT scans acquired from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) was used - 50 whole-body positron emission tomography (PET)-CTs, 25 chest, and 25 abdominal. Five different body compositions were manually annotated (VAT, SAT, IMAT, SM, and bone). A training-while-annotating strategy was used for efficiency. The UNet model was trained using the already annotated cases. Then, this model was used to enable semi-automatic annotation for the remaining cases. The 10-fold cross-validation method was used to develop and validate the performance of several convolutional neural networks (CNNs), including UNet, Recurrent Residual UNet (R2Unet), and UNet++. A 3-D patch sampling operation was used when training the CNN models. The separately trained CNN models were tested to see if they could achieve a better performance than segmenting them jointly. Paired-samples t-test was used to test for statistical significance. Results: Among the three CNN models, UNet demonstrated the best overall performance in jointly segmenting the five body compositions with a Dice coefficient of 0.840+/-0.091, 0.908+/-0.067, 0.603+/-0.084, 0.889+/-0.027, and 0.884+/-0.031, and a Jaccard index of 0.734+/-0.119, 0.837+/-0.096, 0.437+/-0.082, 0.800+/-0.042, 0.793+/-0.049, respectively for VAT, SAT, IMAT, SM, and bone. Conclusion: There were no significant differences among the CNN models in segmenting body composition, but jointly segmenting body compositions achieved a better performance than segmenting them separately.