Performance evaluation of the electrode configuration in bioelectrical impedance analysis for visceral fat measurement

Excessive amount of visceral fat is considered as a crucial indicator for the metabolic syndrome (MS). Visceral fat area (VFA) at the umbilicus level measured by CT is adopted as the gold standard, but it has many limitations. Recently, Application of bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) for measuring VFA is widely used. However, the correlation between impedance and VFA is highly dependent on the measurement conditions. Therefore, we evaluate its measurement conditions here. In our experiment, we choose 5 different electrode configurations with changes of current and its frequency for evaluating its performance to distinguish fat and thin group with impedance. Our results indicated that electrode arrangement with fixed waist ratio is better in its performance than fixed distance electrode arrangement. Current electrode on each flank side is better than on the front and rear side. Shorter distance between current electrode and voltage electrode is better than longer distance in its performance. Our experiment results are presented.