Fig. 1.
Standardised ultrasound (US) measurement of subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT). a US sites. UA upper abdomen, LA lower abdomen, EO external oblique, ES erector spinae, DT distal triceps, BR brachioradialis, FT front thigh, and MC medial calf. Instead of the now standard lateral thigh (LT) site, the EO site was in use when this study was performed. For a detailed description of site marking, see [6, 7]. b B-mode US image of SAT. All eight sites show the same structure: the black band on top represents the thick gel layer (to avoid tissue compression), followed by the structures described in the figure. The amount of embedded fibrous structures (connective tissue) varies between individuals and from site to site; this holds also true for the skin thickness. c Evaluated US image series. Red areas represent the SAT detected by the semi-automatic contour detection algorithm [3, 6]; the ellipses indicate the regions where the algorithm started out for SAT contour detection. In this image series, the evaluation software determined between 48 (LA) to 155 (FT) thickness values within the rectangular ROI. d Survey of results: SAT patterning. SAT thicknesses with the embedded fibrous structures included (dI), and excluded (dE). The sum of the eight d values is termed D. In this participant, DI was 34.8 mm, DE was 31.3 mm, and about 10% of the mean depth comprised fibrous structures, while 90% was lipid, water, and adipose cell structures. BMI of this athlete was 22.0 kg m−2, and MI was 21.7 kg m−2