Whole Body Composition by Hologic QDR 4500/A DXA: System Reliability versus User Accuracy and Precision

Accurate and precise measurement of human tissue composition is both important and imperative in individual health assessment. Although body composition (BC) data acquisition and analysis are both popular and important, selecting an appropriate method or technique for accurate and/or precise assessment of individuals and/or groups remains a challenging task within various sectors of public health. Since 1950s and 1960s, with the pioneer work of Keys & Brozek (1953), Forbes et al. (1956), Siri (1956), Brozek et al. (1963), Behnke (1963), Durnin & Rahaman (1967), BC almost became a scientific discipline profiling itself with the development of many methods, techniques, and equipments. Popular approaches have been criticized over the years because they are subject to measurement errors and/or violation of basic assumptions underlying their use such as hydrodensitometry (Clarys et al., 2010c; Clasey et al., 1999; Elowsson et al., 1998; Heyward, 1996; Johansson et al., 1993; Prior et al., 1997) or anthropometry, e.g., skinfolds (Beddoe, 1998; Clarys et al., 1987, 2005, 2010a; Martin et al., 1985, 1992; Scafoglieri et al., 2010a) and the universally accepted new method of choice, the dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) (Bolotin, 1998, 2007; Bolotin & Sievanen, 2001; Bolotin et al., 2001; Clarys et al., 2010b; Provyn et al., 2008; Scafoglieri et al., 2010c).