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 × sagittal abdominal diameter + 311.97 × waist-to-height ratio + 0.71 × age + 23.93 × sex + 1.57 × IP VFA (250 kHz) − 174.35 ( r = 0.904, P r = 0.905). CONCLUSIONS Our method using BI is a simple and convenient method for accurately estimating VFA.