Reproducibility of DXA in Obese Women

Obesity Increases Precision Errors in Total Body Dual-Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry Measurements

“…These results are generally similar in the optimal BMI group to those reported by Kiebak et al in their group which was reflective of the general population, but the overweight and obese groups in our study yielded higher precision errors [15]. The results of this study yielded similar results in the obese group to that by Cordero-MacIntyre et al in their study of 20 obese women [9].…”

“…The ability of TB DXA to accurately and precisely measure BMD, fat and lean tissue within these different populations is unlikely to be comparable [9], and a previous study demonstrated larger precision errors in spine, hip and total body BMD in obese groups [10]. As obesity becomes increasingly prevalent in the western world, DXA services are likely in future to see rising numbers of patients in the over-weight and obese groups [11].…”

“…Previous studies of TB DXA precision errors have investigated a range of subjects, but the only other study in an obese population focused on a small number of obese women, with no direct comparison with their normal weight counterparts [9]. To date no well-powered study has been purposely designed to investigate TB DXA precision errors on the GE Lunar Prodigy.…”

The Multidomain Mobility Lab in Older Persons: From Bench to Bedside. The Assessment of Body Composition in Older Persons at Risk of Mobility Limitations

“…Body composition studies with DXA fan-beam and pencil-beam have found that the fan beam measurement overestimate lean mass with on the counterpart an understimation of fat mass with differences between various hardware and software mainly between 1% and 5% for different tissues. For Hologic 4500A, compared with both the C model and body water technique, previous research has shown that even with modification of the software to minimize effects of magnification (55) there is a systematic overestimation of FFM (50,52,56). Tothill (57–58) compared fan- and pencil-beam DXA finding differences between 0.5% and 19% in regional and total body composition, emphasizing the importance of separate calibration with the same step phantom for studies using different instruments.…”

A technique to assess body composition and sarcopenia using DXA: application for an obese population

“…Additional research is needed for investigating individuals varying in fat and lean mass. Moreover, with increasing mass, measurement precision with DXA technology decreases and this likely affects the agreement between the reference WB scan and the summed method (Cordero-MacIntyre et al, 2002). This concern may also be influenced by the absolute size of skeleton or soft tissue mass.…”