Imaging as a Tool for Measuring Body Fat

Obesity is defined as a condition of abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may affect health. It is a pan-global epidemic disease and has been escalating during the past two decades. Obesity is the major risk for a variety of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. People think that obesity causes a problem in high-income countries such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, etc. However, the obesity problem now arises dramatically in low-income countries too such as South Africa, India, etc. Body weight is the result of genetic defect, metabolism, behaviour, culture and environment. There are many methods for assessing body composition. Abdominal fat is distributed into two main compartments which have different metabolic characteristics: subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue. Measuring visceral adipose tissue is extremely important as it is closely associated with metabolic syndrome eventually contributing to morbidity and mortality. In this chapter, we will discuss imaging, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound.