Dear AuntMinnieEurope Member,
Sports fans across the continent must be getting excited. The Euros, Wimbledon, two golf majors, and (best of all) the Olympics are looming large.
To mark the beginning of this special period, our top story this week focuses on sports imaging. Dr. Imtiaz Ahmad gave a practical, informative, and timely talk at the UK Imaging & Oncology Congress (UKIO 2021), and we have a report about his main advice. Find out more in the MRI Community.
Another highlight at the virtual UKIO was the plenary session about 50 years of CT. Prof. Janet Husband -- a legendary figure in cancer imaging and U.K. radiology -- described how she first realized about the modality's huge clinical potential. Don't miss her insight and wisdom.
Placenta accreta spectrum (PAS) disorder -- or abnormally invasive placenta -- occurs when the placenta does not detach spontaneously after delivery and cannot be removed without causing massive bleeding. The incidence is rising fast due to increasing rates of cesarean delivery, which is a risk factor for PAS in later pregnancies.
Researchers from Sheffield, U.K., have conducted an in-depth study of this clinical condition, and they presented their findings at UKIO 2021. Head over to the Women's Imaging Community for the full story.
Why all the fuss about low-field MRI? This question has cropped up regularly in chatrooms and webinars over the past year or so. To provide some answers, we spoke with two Swiss enthusiasts about low field's benefits and what the future might hold.
Finally, we have an intriguing article about spinal surgery. A Singaporean group has reported that giving patients a four-legged walking stick to hold and providing a cushion for them to rest their heads on during slot-scanning digital radiography helps them to stay still and achieve maximum bending positions. It may be worth a try.
![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)
