Effects of Brown Adipose Tissue on Health Examined Through AI-Powered Clinical Analysis
Researchers measured the metabolic activity of brown adipose tissue using artificial intelligence to analyze PET-CT scans in a large cohort of over 100,000 patients, finding that the presence of this tissue is linked to a lower incidence of various diseases.
To investigate the roles of brown adipose tissue in human physiology, the research team established an expanded cohort comprising over 100,000 patients and semi-automatically evaluated metabolic activities using AI-supported methods.
The Importance of Brown Adipose Tissue
While obesity constitutes a significant risk factor for type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases, white adipose tissue stores energy, whereas brown adipose tissue dissipates energy as heat through thermogenesis.
Expanded Patient Cohort
Researchers created the Expanded Brown Adipose Tissue Cohort consisting of 101,243 patients by examining FDG-PET-CT scans taken at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center between 2018 and 2024.
AI-Based Measurement Methods
The team utilized the machine learning-based TriDFusion approach to measure the total and region-specific metabolic activities of patients who were positive for brown adipose tissue, investigating their relationships with various clinical outcomes.
Links to Cardiometabolic and Other Diseases
Multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that the presence of brown adipose tissue is significantly associated with a lower prevalence of cardiometabolic, respiratory, and psychiatric diseases.