Correlation between Body Composition and Regional Magnetic Induction Spectroscopy

Abstract

Continuous monitoring of body composition is a relevant condition in monitoring sport people and essential in the training of high-performance athletes. Currently, there are no portable devices for personal use that allow athletes to track changes in their body composition as a result of their training program. Magnetic Induction Spectroscopy (MIS) allows non- invasive exploration of the electrical properties of biological tissues. The goal of this work was to explore regional measurements of MIS in the abdomen and arm to determine if they correlate with characteristic regional parameters for estimating body composition by electrical bioimpoedance The body composition of 25 volunteers was estimated through Electrical Bioimpedance Spectrocopy (EBIS), and its parameters in abdomen and armsegments were correlated with MIS measurements in the same segments. The results indicate a correlation ofthe MIS magnitude at 400 KHz with the water content inthe arm segment (ρ =0.438, p<0.05), while the MIS phase at 99.4 KHz in the abdomen seems a potential correlation with body fat in the trunk but not statistical significance is evident (ρ =0.271, p=0.051). In principle, MIS measurements seem indicate sensitivity to water content and body fat in arm and trunk segments, respectively. However, the results so far are not conclusive to determine the technical feasibility of MIS to estimate no invasively body composition parameters.