Fig. 1

Comparison of sarcopenic and non-sarcopenic computed tomography images at the third lumbar vertebral level. A comparison of two cirrhotic patients with identical BMI (32 kg/m²). Red color indicates skeletal muscle: rectus abdominis, oblique and lateral abdominal muscles, psoas, and paraspinal muscles. The patient on the left is sarcopenic with L3mi of 49.82 cm²/m²; the patient on the right is not sarcopenic with L3mi of 70.8 cm²/m². In their study of 112 cirrhotic patients, Montano-Loza et al. used abdominal CT images taken at the third lumbar vertebrae and cutoffs provided by Baumgartner et al. in 1998