Novel and Simple Ultrasonographic Methods for Estimating the Abdominal Visceral Fat Area

Figure 1

(a) US measurement picture; distance A showed the distance from the skin to the posterior wall of the aorta. Distance A1 showed the distance from the internal surface of the rectus abdominis muscle to the posterior wall of the aorta. The thickness of the subcutaneous fat layer showed the distance from the skin to the rectus abdominis muscle. (b) Triangle method; VFA was calculated as a summed area of the six triangles, which is calculated by the distance to the back wall of the aorta from three positions. (c) Ellipse method; we hypothesized that the ellipsoidal-shaped peritoneal cavity was the reduced scale model of the ellipsoidal-shaped cross section of abdomen. We defined waist circumference as the circumference of the ellipse, and the US-measured distance as the semiminor axis. The VFA was taken by subtracting the back side one-third area occupied by bone and muscles from the peritoneal cavity ellipse.

(a) US measurement

(b) Triangle method

(c) Ellipse method