A new simple measurement system of visceral fat accumulation by bioelectrical impedance analysis

Abstract

Measurement of visceral fat accumulation is essential for the diagnosis of obesity. Currently, the visceral fat area (VFA) obtained from the abdominal cross-sectional image measured by X-ray CT is used as the gold standard. However it has problems of complexity, cost, and X-ray exposure. On the other hand, the waist circumference is used as a simple index, but it is indirect method and is affected by subcutaneous fat. Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is a proven method practically used to measure total body fat, and is the most suitable for the measurement of visceral fat accumulation. For the latter purpose, we developed a new simple measurement system using dual current pathways bioelectrical impedance analysis (dual-BIA). This proposed system measures imped ance reflecting the subcutaneous fat volume (SFV) and the fat free volume (FFV) in the abdomen by passing current via respective pathways. Regarding to measure these two imped ance values we adopted the four electrodes method. The VFA was calculated by using these two impedance values and abdominal body shape data to minimize the influence of FFV and SFV. We compared the VFA measured by dual-BIA system with that measured by X-ray CT in 98 subjects, and found a high correlation coefficient (r=0.888, p<0.001). Our proposed system is suggested to be useful for a simple visceral fat accumulation measurement.