Chinese Journal of Magnetic Resonance ›› 2025, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (4): 378-389.doi: 10.11938/cjmr20253155cstr: 32225.14.cjmr20253155

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Study on Pancreas Automatic Segmentation, Regional Quantification, and Diabetes Assessment

LI Yinghao1,2, WANG Lihui3, WANG Sucheng1, ZHU Zhongqi1, HUANG Changdong1, LI Renfeng3, CAO Kaiming3, HU Haiyang3, JIA Yiming3, LIANG Songtao3, YANG Guang1,2,§(), LU Qing3,#(), WANG Hongzhi1,2,*()   

  1. 1. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
    2. Institute of Magnetic Resonance and Molecular Imaging in Medicine, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
    3. Department of Radiology, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University, Shanghai 200123, China

Abstract:

Pancreatic health is closely linked to diabetes, making accurate fat quantification crucial for early diagnosis. This study proposes a deep learning-based method for automatic pancreatic segmentation and fat quantification. The nnU-Net model achieves high-precision segmentation on m-Dixon Imaging, with a Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.92. A novel sub-region partitioning and quantification method enables precise delineation of the pancreatic head, body, and tail. Analysis of 256 subjects (healthy, prediabetic, diabetic) reveals a significant association between pancreatic tail fat and type 2 diabetes (p < 0.05). Using random forest classifiers, diabetes risk was effectively predicted based on tail fat content and a composite fat index, yielding an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.68 and 0.73, respectively. This method offers a promising tool for the early diagnosis of diabetes.

Key words: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) prediction, deep learning, pancreas, nnU-Net

CLC Number: