Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) in an epidemiological study

Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) offers many advantages as a method of assessing body composition, particularly body fat. For this reason BIA is used in hospitals, nutritional counselling, and in sport and rehabilitation centres. For use in epidemiological studies, high precision and reliability of measurements are necessary. By means of an intensive training of field workers and periodic quality control, BIA can be conducted under standardized conditions so that little variability and good reproducibility are achieved. Factors affecting BIA results, as well as measures to ensure standardization, quality assessment and quality control are explained and exemplified by the MONICA project of Augsburg.