Automated Cardiac Adipose Tissue Segmentation in Computed Tomography: A Literature Review

This review provides an overview of recent advancements in automated segmentation methods on Computed Tomography (CT) for two types of cardiac fat: Epicardial adipose Tissue (EAT) and Pericardial Adipose Tissue (PAT). These fat deposits, separated by the pericardium, have been linked to various cardiovascular diseases, with EAT receiving the most research attention. Their complex anatomical context makes manual quantification highly time-consuming and prone to considerable inter-observer variability. Automated methods effectively address these complications, offering a more efficient and consistent solution. This study encompasses a broad range of methods, spanning AI as well as non-AI approaches. Additionally, it presents the remaining challenges, including the need for larger annotated public datasets and optimized attenuation thresholds for contrast-enhanced CT. It is demonstrated that automated methods are able to achieve segmentation results comparable to the quality of human annotation, proving their potential as a clinical tool for discovering new biomarkers and enhancing patient outcomes.

Biological Sex Determination in Cadavers Using Deep Learning Algorithms from Computed Tomography Images of Pelvis and Skull

Sexual identification of decomposed cadavers challenges traditional methods dependent on visual anthropological analysis. This study evaluates state-of-the-art deep learning (including YOLO26, YOLO11, ConvNeXt-Tiny, EfficientNetV2, ViT-B16, VGG16, and ResNet50) with transfer learning to automatically determine biological sex from forensic computed tomography (CT) scans. We analyzed 141 autopsied cadavers from the Forensic Medical Institute of Goiânia-GO, including a broad age range and varying conditions of preservation. The three-dimensional reconstructions of the pelvis and skull were converted into standardized two-dimensional profile projections, contributing to the study of this new technical approach. Data augmentation techniques compensated for sample limitations. Two scenarios were validated: binary and quaternary classification (one class per sex vs. one class per anatomical region of each sex). The best-performing model achieved highly consistent results on the pelvis region and still satisfactory performance on the skull region, reaching an overall patient-level accuracy of 95.65%, recall of 92.86%, F1- score of 94.36%, and precision of 97.22%, maintaining consistent performance across the evaluated cases, including those with trauma-related artifacts. Results indicate the technical feasibility of the methodology, demonstrating that deep learning models can provide objective, high-speed skeletal analysis. Since the study was conducted using data from a single institution and a single computed tomography scanner, further validation across multiple centers and scanners is required to assess the generalizability of the proposed approach

VEELA: A Clinically-Constrained Benchmark for Liver Vessel Segmentation in Computed Tomography Angiography

Accurate segmentation of hepatic and portal vessels in contrast-enhanced computed tomography angiography (CTA) remains challenging due to complex vascular topology, peripheral visibility limitations, and acquisition-induced ambiguities. While existing public datasets offer valuable benchmarks, few include clinically realistic annotation constraints. We introduce VEELA (Vessel Extraction and Extrication for Liver Analysis), a rigorously curated liver vessel dataset derived from 40 CTA scans inherited from the CHAOS grand-challenge cohort. All vessels were manually delineated slice-by-slice under multi-expert consensus, using a strict visibility-driven annotation policy and avoiding anatomically inferred interpolation. This design explicitly captures anatomical variability and imaging-related uncertainty. As a continuation of the CHAOS challenge, VEELA enables reproducible cross-benchmark evaluation while extending the scope to fine-grained hepatic and portal vessel segmentation. We further establish a standardized benchmarking framework and analyze complementary evaluation metrics, including topology-aware (clDice), overlap-based (IoU), boundary-sensitive (NSD), and geometry-aware (area, length) measures. Our results demonstrate that different metrics capture distinct aspects of vascular integrity, underscoring the necessity of multi-perspective evaluation for clinically meaningful vessel segmentation. VEELA is publicly released to facilitate reproducible research and support the development of robust vascular segmentation methods. Researchers can access the evaluation metrics, dataset, and submission platform at https://www.synapse.org/Synapse:syn65471967.