Dear AuntMinnieEurope Member,
It's always big news when Prof. Dr. Christiane Kuhl, PhD, publishes the findings of a research project, so it's no surprise to see that our coverage of her latest study on contrast use in MRI is this week's top story.
Significantly, she's convinced that gadopiclenol is the ideal contrast agent for healthy people requiring repetitive contrast agent injections, including women with extremely dense breast tissue who undergo MRI for screening. Find out more in our Women's Imaging Community.
Another study that has captured our attention is an award-winning collaboration on diffusion MRI between two well-respected groups in Switzerland and the U.K. The lead author thinks the study has significant implications for general radiologists, especially neuroradiologists. Head over now to the MRI Community for the full story.
Life expectancy in Spain is nearly 86 years -- the highest in Europe and the fourth highest worldwide. Analysis from Madrid suggests that the brains of so-called SuperAgers are less affected by the cognitive decline that tends to manifest as people age. Also, they are more likely to have greater movement speed and lower rates of anxiety and depression.
In other news, researchers from Turku in Finland have used PET and functional MRI to discover more about male orgasms. What did they learn? Find out in the Molecular Imaging Community.
Many experts believe one of the best ways to avoid burnout is to have a full and busy life outside of radiology, and Prof. Erik Ranschaert, PhD, is a fine example of this approach. He's keeping extremely busy over the summer, getting ready for climbing Mount Kenya on a charity expedition. I'm sure he'd really value your support.
![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)
