Influence of ambient temperature on whole body and segmental bioimpedance spectroscopy measurements

Bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) measurements are easy to implement and could be used for continuous monitoring. However, several factors (e.g. environment temperature) influence the measurements limiting the accuracy of the technology. Changes in skin temperature produced by changes in ambient temperature are related with changes in skin blood flow and skin impedance. It is assumed that skin impedance change is responsible for the error observed in whole body and segmental measurements. Measurements including body parts more distant from the torso seem to be more affected. In the present article skin and segment impedance have been performed on healthy subjects under extreme changes in environment temperature (13-39 °C). A commercial BIS device with a range between 5 kHz and 1 MHz has been used for the measurements. The results indicate that not only skin impedance, but also impedance of deeper tissue (e.g. muscle) may be responsible for the influence of environment temperature on BIS measurements. Segmental (knee-to-knee) BIS measurements show a relative change of only 2 %, while forearm and whole body impedance changed 14 % and 8 % respectively.