Pediatric body composition based on automatic segmentation of computed tomography scans: a pilot study

Body composition during childhood may predispose to negative health outcomes later in life. Automatic segmentation may assist in quantifying pediatric body composition in children.

To evaluate automatic segmentation for body composition on pediatric computed tomography (CT) scans and to provide normative data on muscle and fat areas throughout childhood using automatic segmentation.

In this pilot study, 537 children (ages 1-17 years) who underwent abdominal CT after high-energy trauma at a Dutch tertiary center (2002-2019) were retrospectively identified. Of these, the CT images of 493 children (66% boys) were used to establish normative data. Muscle (psoas, paraspinal and abdominal wall) and fat (subcutaneous and visceral) areas were measured at the third lumbar vertebral (L3) level by automatic segmentation. A representative subset of 52 scans was also manually segmented to evaluate the performance of automatic segmentation.

For manually-segmented versus automatically-segmented areas (52 scans), mean Dice coefficients were high for muscle (0.87-0.90) and subcutaneous fat (0.88), but lower for visceral fat (0.60). In the control group, muscle area was comparable for both sexes until the age of 13 years, whereafter, boys developed relatively more muscle. From a young age, boys were more prone to visceral fat storage than girls. Overall, boys had significantly higher visceral-to-subcutaneous fat ratios (median 1.1 vs. 0.6, P<0.01) and girls higher fat-to-muscle ratios (median 1.0 vs. 0.7, P<0.01).

Automatic segmentation of L3-level muscle and fat areas allows for accurate quantification of pediatric body composition. Using automatic segmentation, the development in muscle and fat distribution during childhood (in otherwise healthy) Dutch children was demonstrated.