Advanced Body Composition Methods to access Nutritional Assessment and its Associated Conditions and Disease Event

Short Abstract: Weight is one of the most widely used measures of nutritional assessment. The subdivision of the body to fat and lean compartments is also available using a number of technologies such as bioimpedance, deuterium dilution, and densitometry. However, subdivision of the total body into two masses is a crude tool to understand to complex nature of energy expenditure, resistance to disease, and risk prediction for mortality and metabolic diseases. In this talk, I discuss advances in methods to assess subcompartments of body composition using clinical relevant and field applicable tools including dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and optical assessment of the body shape. I will present resent work relating body shape to diabetes status and optical body shape to the body composition of young children. In addition, the application of shape and appearance modeling will also be introduced as applicable to DXA and optical imaging.