Utility of Impedance Spectroscopy for Determining the Body Composition in Humans

Abstract

Measurements of body composition have become as important procedure in hydrate and nutrition assessments. The patients in hemodialysis usually suffer important variations of their hydrate and nutritional deterioration that rebounds negatively in their quality of life. Today, the bioimpedance technique (impedance spectroscopy) shows a better utility for these studies than that of other techniques because it is a simple, cheap, safe and noninvasive method. This paper presents the study carried out in 20 healthy people by using this technique, applying 800 microamperes of current in a wide frequency range (5-200 kHz). The experimental results showed a good agreement with the theoretical values, obtained by using the Cole-Cole representation. The physical parameters were determined and later associated to the clinical parameters. The clinical parameters showed a good agreement with previous reports, which validate this kind of study to be applied to patients in hemodialysis in order to make a better clinical analysis of them.