Development Of Adipose Quantification Software Based On Micro-CT

As one technology of CT(Computerized Tomography, CT), Micro-CT(Micro-Computed Tomography), also known as microscopic CT, is known for highresolution, low-cost, non-invasive, low radiation and convenient to use. It can obtainnon-invasive and high resolution images of bone, tooth, subcutaneous tissues, visceraltissues and biological materials. Also it can obtain three-dimensional images ofmicroscopic structure of the object. Using Micro-CT method to do adipose quantitativeanalysisis of in-vivo small animals is one of the most important application of Micro-CT.Adipose parameters can be accurately calculated by post-processing algorithms ofMicro-CT software. This method is an accurate technique of global and local adiposequantification, which can determine the type of tissue by CT value and providesaccurate parameters for examination and diagnosis of obesity and metabolic diseases.In this paper, in order to meet the needs of adipose quantitative analysis of in vivosmall animal, an adipose quantification software which is based on Micro-CT to doquantitative measurement of intra-abdominal adipose parameters such as subcutaneousadipose tissue(SAT), visceral adipose tissue(VAT) and fat ratio has been developed. It isbased on Qt(a graphic user interface application framework) which provides interfacesupport and MITK(Medical Imaging ToolKit) which offers imaging processingalgorithms. The software is designed with user-friendly software interface,user-convenient operation and modular data processing which consists of data loadingand changing, region of interest selecting, filtering and segmentation, subcutaneous andvisceral adipose segmentation and adipose parameters calculation and saving. SkeletonCuts segmentation has been used to segment subcutaneous fat and visceral fat. Reliableadipose quantitative analysis parameters can be calculated by using this segmentationmethod. At last, experiments are carried to research methods of improving the signal tonoise ratio of adipose CT images and validate the robustness and effectiveness ofadipose quantitative analysis software.With the development of Micro-CT technology, Micro-CT adipose quantitativeanalysis technology will be widely used in scientific research and clinical practice, andprovides a convenient and effective way to quantitatively diagnose obesity diseasescaused by adipose accumulation.