Identifying and Assessing Inter-Muscular Fat at the Distal Diaphyseal Femur Measured by Peripheral Quantitative Computed Tomography (pQCT)

INTRODUCTION Inter/intramuscular fat can be assessed with peripheral Quantitative Computed Tomography (pQCT) and is of interest as an indicator of ‘muscle quality’. Typical pQCT scan sites (forearm, lower leg) have a low amount of inter/intramuscular fat, however distal diaphyseal femur scan sites with conspicuous inter/intramuscular fat have been identified as potentially more prudent scan sites, even in healthy adolescents. However, current state of the art analysis methods require labour-intensive manual segmentation of the scan. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the reliability of a novel open source automated enclosing convex polygon approach (source code https://github.…