Ge 750hd

The CT protocol used a non-contrast abdominal CT scan performed using GE (GE 750HD (64) at Birmingham and GE Light-Speed VCT (64) at Oakland; GE Healthcare, Waukesha, Wisconsin) or Siemens (Sensation 64 at Chicago and Minneapolis Centers; Siemens Medical Solutions, Erlangen, Germany) multidetector CT scanners and has been published previously.^{16 (link)} Quality control and image analysis were performed at a core reading center (Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, North Carolina). CT diagnosis of hepatic steatosis was made by measuring liver attenuation (LA) in Hounsfield Units (HU). NAFLD was defined as an LA value ≤40 HU. LA was the average of 9 measurements on 3 CT slices of the right lobe of the liver. A cut-off of LA value ≤40 HU correlates with moderate-to-severe steatosis (>30%) in unenhanced CT scans in multiple studies.^{17 (link)–19 (link)} The characterization of LA in this cohort used a dedicated workflow within the National Institute of Health’s Center of Information Technology Medical Image Processing, Analysis, and Visualization application has previously published.^{16 (link)} The interclass correlation coefficient between different readers on a random sample of 156 participants was 0.975 for LA, indicating high reproducibility of CT measured LA in this cohort.

The CT protocol used a non-contrast abdominal CT scan performed using GE [GE 750HD (64) at Birmingham and GE LightSpeed VCT (64) at Oakland; GE Healthcare, Waukesha, Wisconsin] or Siemens [Sensation 64 at Chicago and Minneapolis Centers; Siemens Medical Solutions, Erlangen, Germany] multidetector CT scanners and has been published previously.^{12 (link)} Quality control and image analysis were performed at a core reading center (Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, North Carolina). CT diagnosis of hepatic steatosis was made by measuring liver attenuation (LA) in Hounsfield Units (HU). NAFLD was defined as a LA value ≤ 40 HU. LA was the average of nine measurements on three CT slices of the right lobe of the liver. A cut-off of LA value ≤ 40 HU correlates with moderate-to-severe steatosis (>30%) in unenhanced CT scans in multiple studies.^{13 (link)–15 (link)} The characterization of LA in this cohort used a dedicated workflow within the National Institute of Health’s Center of Information Technology Medical Image Processing, Analysis, and Visualization application has previously published.^{12 (link)} The interclass correlation coefficient between different readers on a random sample of 156 participants was 0.975 for LA, indicating high reproducibility of CT measured LA in this cohort.

The CT protocol included the heart and lower abdomen using a non-contrast CT scan performed using GE [GE 750HD (64) and GE LightSpeed VCT (64) Birmingham and Oakland Centers, respectively; GE Healthcare, Waukesha, Wisconsin] or Siemens [Sensation 64, Chicago and Minneapolis Centers; Siemens Medical Solutions, Erlangen, Germany] multidetector CT scanners. Quality control and image analysis was performed at a core reading center (Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, North Carolina). The protocol included scout images, one ECG gated heart series, and a lower abdominal series.