Vickie Baracos

Vickie Baracos pioneered the use of CT-based body composition analysis to quantify muscle wasting in cancer patients, establishing the L3 lumbar skeletal muscle index as a clinical tool for sarcopenia assessment. Her research demonstrated that CT-measured muscle depletion is a powerful predictor of cancer outcomes independent of BMI. She has contributed to international definitions of sarcopenia in cancer and multi-center studies evaluating muscle-preserving interventions.