Andrew Green

PhD

The University of Manchester

Research Fellow

NLST (Learn more about this study)

NLST-497

Apr 17, 2019

Population wide sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity analysis

Sarcopenia is a progressive disease of muscle loss, either through aging or as a result of comorbidity (including cancer). Sarcopenia has been shown to be prognostic for overall and cancer specific survival in chemotherapy cohorts. Sarcopenia has also been shown to be related to the rate at which patients complete treatment. Obesity is an excess of fat in the body, which has been linked with several other morbidities; the combination of the two is known as sarcopenic obesity, and has been shown to be highly predictive of the presence of multiple morbidities.

Both sarcopenia and obesity can be measured on slices of axial CT imaging, usually in the vicinity of L3, but some work has also been done measuring sarcopenia in the region of T4, which should be visible on all lung screening images. To measure sarcopenia, we have an automated segmentation method capable of segmenting large numbers of images quickly.

This project aims to assess sarcopenia in a very large cohort of individuals(~10,000) using segmentation methods on their screening CT images. We will also evaluate changes in sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity of individuals by analysing screening CTs at multiple timepoints one and two years after induction, corresponding to analyses at T0, T1 and T2 as defined in the trial.

1. To assess a very large population dataset for the prevalence of sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity

2. To determine the predictive power of sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity, and in particular changes in sarcopenic obesity for the incidence of lung cancer