Core Concepts
The internal tool developed by the researchers outperformed the publicly available TotalSegmentator tool in accurately segmenting subcutaneous fat, visceral fat, and muscle in CT scans.
Abstract
The study compared the performance of an internally developed tool and the publicly available TotalSegmentator tool in segmenting muscle, subcutaneous fat, and visceral fat from CT scans. The researchers used the publicly available SAROS dataset, which contains 900 CT series from 882 patients, to evaluate the tools.
For subcutaneous fat segmentation, the internal tool achieved a 3% higher Dice score compared to TotalSegmentator (83.8 vs. 80.8). For muscle segmentation, the internal tool showed a 5% improvement in Dice score (87.6 vs. 83.2). The results were statistically significant (p < 0.01).
Due to the lack of ground truth segmentations for visceral fat in the SAROS dataset, the researchers used Cohen's Kappa to assess the agreement between the two tools. The Kappa score of 0.856 indicated a near-perfect agreement between the tools in segmenting visceral fat.
The internal tool also demonstrated strong correlations with the ground truth annotations for muscle volume (R^2 = 0.99), muscle attenuation (R^2 = 0.93), and subcutaneous fat volume (R^2 = 0.99). The correlation for subcutaneous fat attenuation was moderate (R^2 = 0.45).
The Bland-Altman analysis showed that the internal tool had a significantly lower bias in muscle volume estimation compared to TotalSegmentator. For subcutaneous fat volume, the internal tool had a slightly higher positive bias.
The study highlights the potential of the internally developed tool in advancing the accuracy of body composition analysis, which is crucial for various medical applications, such as disease characterization, surgical planning, and personalized risk assessment.
Stats
The internal tool achieved a 3% higher Dice score (83.8 vs. 80.8) for subcutaneous fat segmentation compared to TotalSegmentator.
The internal tool showed a 5% improvement (87.6 vs. 83.2) in Dice score for muscle segmentation compared to TotalSegmentator.
The Cohen's Kappa score for visceral fat segmentation was 0.856, indicating near-perfect agreement between the two tools.
The internal tool had a significantly lower bias (around 250cm^3) in muscle volume estimation compared to TotalSegmentator (around 500cm^3).
The internal tool had a slightly higher positive bias (around +200cm^3) in subcutaneous fat volume estimation compared to TotalSegmentator (around 0cm^3).
Quotes
"Our findings indicated that our Internal tool outperformed TotalSegmentator in measuring subcutaneous fat and muscle."
"The high Cohen's Kappa score for visceral fat suggests a reliable level of agreement between the two tools."
"These results demonstrate the potential of our tool in advancing the accuracy of body composition analysis."