Advanced Body Composition Assessment: from Body Mass Index to Body Composition Profiling

Overview

Journal J Investig Med

Publisher Sage Publications

Specialty General Medicine

Date 2018 Mar 28

PMID 29581385

Citations 225

Authors

Magnus Borga

Janne West

Jimmy D Bell

Nicholas C Harvey

Thobias Romu

Steven B Heymsfield

Olof Dahlqvist Leinhard

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

This paper gives a brief overview of common non-invasive techniques for body composition analysis and a more in-depth review of a body composition assessment method based on fat-referenced quantitative MRI. Earlier published studies of this method are summarized, and a previously unpublished validation study, based on 4753 subjects from the UK Biobank imaging cohort, comparing the quantitative MRI method with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is presented. For whole-body measurements of adipose tissue (AT) or fat and lean tissue (LT), DXA and quantitative MRIs show excellent agreement with linear correlation of 0.99 and 0.97, and coefficient of variation (CV) of 4.5 and 4.6 per cent for fat (computed from AT) and LT, respectively, but the agreement was found significantly lower for visceral adipose tissue, with a CV of >20 per cent. The additional ability of MRI to also measure muscle volumes, muscle AT infiltration and ectopic fat, in combination with rapid scanning protocols and efficient image analysis tools, makes quantitative MRI a powerful tool for advanced body composition assessment.

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