Abstract
Cardiometabolic diseases are an increasing global health burden. While socioeconomic, environmental, behavioural, and genetic risk factors have been identified, a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms is required to develop more effective interventions. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used to assess organ health, but biobank-scale studies are still in their infancy. Using over 38,000 abdominal MRI scans in the UK Biobank, we used deep learning to quantify volume, fat, and iron in seven organs and tissues, and demonstrate that imaging-derived phenotypes reflect health status. We show that these traits have a substantial heritable component (8-44%) and identify 93 independent genome-wide significant associations, including four associations with liver traits that have not previously been reported. Our work demonstrates the tractability of deep learning to systematically quantify health parameters from high-throughput MRI across a range of organs and tissues, and use the largest-ever study of its kind to generate new insights into the genetic architecture of these traits.
Highlights
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is often regarded as the gold standard for the measurement of body composition in clinical research, with measurements of visceral adipose tissue (VAT), liver, and pancreatic fat content having an enormous impact on our understanding of conditions such as type-2 diabetes (T2D) and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) (Thomas et al, 2013)
Pancreas, kidney, spleen, and abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue (ASAT) volumes decreased, while VAT and lung volumes increased with age
We have developed a pipeline to systematically quantify organ and tissue parameters from MRI scans of over 38,000 participants in the UKBB imaging cohort, producing the largest sample size to date of abdominal imaging-derived phenotypes (IDPs)
Summary
MRI is often regarded as the gold standard for the measurement of body composition in clinical research, with measurements of visceral adipose tissue (VAT), liver, and pancreatic fat content having an enormous impact on our understanding of conditions such as type-2 diabetes (T2D) and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) (Thomas et al, 2013). In parallel to these developments, biobankscale genome-wide association studies and epidemiological studies have elucidated the genetic basis of many complex traits, and shed light on their role in disease. The full potential of the UKBB abdominal MRI data has not been realised, in part due to the lack of suitable automated methods to extract the variety and depth of relevant features from multiple organs in very large cohorts
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