Estimating Visceral Fat Area by Multifrequency Bioelectrical Impedance

OBJECTIVE We developed a new method of estimating visceral fat area (VFA) using multifrequency bioelectrical impedance (BI). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We considered abdominal composition as a parallel circuit model composed of VFA and subcutaneous fat area and calculated the impedance of VFA (IP(VFA)) from this model. The methods were tested against measures of VFA by computed tomography (CT). Multiple regression analysis was performed on 103 participants to estimate VFA. We cross-validated the regression equation against CT-measured VFA in 30 additional participants. RESULTS The regression equation was VFA = 3.57 x sagittal abdominal diameter + 311.97 x waist-to-height ratio + 0.71 x age + 23.93 x sex + 1.57 x IP(VFA) (250 kHz) - 174.35 (r = 0.904, P < 0.01). We observed a strong correlation by cross-validation (r = 0.905). CONCLUSIONS Our method using BI is a simple and convenient method for accurately estimating VFA.