NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Mar 30 - Lung density histogram parameters are more reproducible than visual assessment of lung changes in thin-section CT and are more closely related to lung function, exercise capacity, and quality of life in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc), results of a recent study indicate.
Dr. Gianna Camiciottoli and colleagues from the University of Florence, Italy, evaluated the reproducibility of visual and lung CT densitometric parameters -- such as mean lung attenuation (MLA), skewness, and kurtosis -- in 48 SSc patients examined with CT.
As they report in the March issue of Chest, the investigators found that the intraoperator and interoperator reproducibility of these densitometry parameters were higher than those of visual assessment.
They also assessed the relationship of CT findings to functional parameters, including functional residual capacity (FRC), FVC, FEV1, diffusion capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide (DLCO), six-min walking testing (6MWT), and health-related quality of life questionnaire (QLQ) parameters.
Univariate analysis showed that only densitometric measurements were correlated with subscores of exercise and QLQ.
"By multivariate stepwise method, only two functional parameters -- percentage of predicted FRC and percentage of predicted FVC -- predicted independently global visual score, extent, and severity scores, and accounted for approximately 40% of their variance," the researchers write.
"These findings indicate that quantitative CT evaluation would potentially offer an objective and reproducible measure of interstitial lung changes not only in SSc but also in other systemic disease with lung involvement," Dr. Camiciottoli commented to Reuters Health.
Last Updated: 2007-03-30 11:55:48 -0400 (Reuters Health)
Chest 2007;131:672-681.
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![Overview of the study design. (A) The fully automated deep learning framework was developed to estimate body composition (BC) (defined as subcutaneous adipose tissue [SAT] in liters; visceral adipose tissue [VAT] in liters; skeletal muscle [SM] in liters; SM fat fraction [SMFF] as a percentage; and intramuscular adipose tissue [IMAT] in deciliters) from MRI. The fully automated framework comprised one model (model 1) to quantify different BC measures (SAT, VAT, SM, SMFF, and IMAT) as three-dimensional (3D) measures from whole-body MRI scans. The second model (model 2) was trained to identify standardized anatomic landmarks along the craniocaudal body axis (z coordinate field), which allowed for subdividing the whole-body measures into different subregions typically examined on clinical routine MRI scans (chest, abdomen, and pelvis). (B) BC was quantified from whole-body MRI in over 66,000 individuals from two large population-based cohort studies, the UK Biobank (UKB) (36,317 individuals) and the German National Cohort (NAKO) (30,291 individuals). Bar graphs show age distribution by sex and cohort. BMI = body mass index. (C) After the performance assessment of the fully automated framework, the change in BC measures, distributions, and profiles across age decades were investigated. Age-, sex-, and height-adjusted body composition reference curves were calculated and made publicly available in a web-based z-score calculator (https://circ-ml.github.io).](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/05/body-comp.XgAjTfPj1W.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
