Validity of a New Abdominal Bioelectrical Impedance Device to Measure Abdominal and Visceral Fat: Comparison With MRI

Abstract

Abdominal fat, and in particular, visceral adipose tissue (VAT), is the critical fat depot associated with metabolic aberrations. At present, VAT can only be accurately measured by computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This study was designed to compare a new abdominal bioelectrical impedance (BIA) device against total abdominal adipose tissue (TAAT) and VAT area measurements made from an abdominal MRI scan, and to assess its reliability and accuracy. One‐hundred twenty participants were recruited, stratified by gender and BMI. Participants had triplicate measures of abdominal fat and waist circumference (WC) with the AB‐140 (Tanita, Tokyo, Japan) and WC measurements using a manual tape measure. A single abdominal MRI scan was performed as the reference method. Triplicate measures with the AB‐140 showed excellent precision for “visceral fat level,” trunk fat %, and WC. AB‐140 “visceral fat level” showed significantly stronger correlations with MRI TAAT area than with MRI VAT area (r = 0.94 vs. 0.65 in men and 0.92 vs. 0.64 in women). AB‐140 WC showed good correlation with manual WC measurements (r = 0.95 in men and 0.90 in women). AB‐140 and manual WCs showed comparable correlations with MRI TAAT area (r = 0.92 and 0.96 in men and 0.88 and 0.88 in women). AB‐140 is a simple, quick, and precise technique to measure abdominal fat and WC in healthy adults. It provides a useful proxy for TAAT measured by MRI, comparable to the correlation obtained with manual WC measurements. Neither the AB‐140 abdominal fat measures nor WC measurement appear to provide a useful proxy measure of VAT.

Identification of Obesity and Cardiovascular Risk in Ethnically and Racially Diverse Populations

“…The AB-140 BIA device, for example, was found to provide an accurate measurement of total abdominal adipose tissue but not VAT compared with MRI. 115 Similarly, measurements with the ViScan BIA device correlated well with MRI measurements of total abdominal adipose tissue and subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue but not intra-abdominal adipose tissue. 116 Another study compared foot-to-foot BIA with the BOD POD in a population of South Asian adults.…”

Impact of the Visceral Fat Area Measured by Dual Impedance Method on the Diagnostic Components of Metabolic Diseases in a Middle-aged Japanese Population

“…Taking these findings into consideration, VFA estimation by BCM can therefore be powerful tool to identify patients with ectopic fat accumulation. There are numerous reports indicating the reliability of BCM estimation of VFA (5,17,22,23). However, one must take into account that the VFA value from BCM is based on completely different technology compared to the CT-based VFA measurement, which is the most accurate method.…”

Non-contact assessment of waist circumference: will tape measurements become progressively obsolete?

“…Nonetheless, the primary advantage of the ViScan device is that, in contrast to the tape method, it is operatorindependent, and hence the inter-investigator variability in WC for a given subject is not expected to be larger than the intra-investigator one. Second, using the tape as gold standard, systematic differences (overestimations of several cm) have previously been reported between the measurements of WC by the ViScan and the tape at umbilical level (Browning et al, 2010;Thomas et al, 2010), and in our study WC obtained by Viscan was about 1 cm less than by tape. These differences may not only be explained by the above-mentioned potential errors when using the tape, but could also be attributed to the fact that the ViScan device uses a very simple algorithm to assess WC: this is based on the relationship demonstrated, in one specific Asian population group, between width diameter and WC.…”

“…WC was measured at the umbilicus in the standing position (n ¼ 74), and also in the supine position in a subgroup (n ¼ 47), by means of a non-stretchable tape at the end of expiration and according to the standardization reference manual described by Lohman et al (1988). WC was also measured in all subjects (n ¼ 74), in random order to tape measures, using a new device (ViScan) whose principle of measurement has been detailed elsewhere (Browning et al, 2010;Thomas et al, 2010); the subjects were lying supine and relaxed while WC was measured at the umbilicus as identified by a red beam emitted from ViScan. Sagittal diameter was also assessed in 72 subjects with an anthropometric compass.…”