| Summary: |
The analysis of body composition is highly relevant to the knowledge of the nutritional status, to the evaluation of growth and development in childhood, to determine the impact of disease and in sports.
A widespread method for evaluating subcutaneous fat tissue is based on the use of a low cost and portable equipment, the skinfold calliper, permitting a quantitative fat tissue indirect evaluation by measuring fat skinfolds. This non invasive measurement is easily accomplished if correctly executed. Nevertheless, if reliable results are to be obtained, they have to be performed by highly trained health technicians following a standard procedure, in order to minimize subjective operator decisions and individual variability.
The skinfold calliper is still commonly used but the need has been identified to invest on its upgrade for better reliability, sensitivity and accuracy.
This project, based on a strong interdisciplinary cooperation (joining Faculdades de Engenharia, Ciências da Nutrição e Desporto of Universidade do Porto) allowing a strong transversal cooperation between students of different areas and improvement of their personal and group skills and knowledge sharing, aims to upgrade a primary virtual instrument prototype developed in LabVIEW 7.1 for monitoring and assessing body nutritional health using a skinfold calliper. This specific equipment, based on a Harpenden calliper, was mechanically adapted to be instrumented with a digital gauge for making possible the calliper integration with the developed LabVIEW virtual instrument. Two miniaturized switches were also incorporated for permitting interaction between the trained health technician and the virtual instrument.
With this work the new version of the virtual instrument shall integrate a data base system for guaranteeing the access to individual historic records. Also, a final report shall be produced every time a test is completed.
The next step of the work will be concerned with the fin  |
Summary
The analysis of body composition is highly relevant to the knowledge of the nutritional status, to the evaluation of growth and development in childhood, to determine the impact of disease and in sports.
A widespread method for evaluating subcutaneous fat tissue is based on the use of a low cost and portable equipment, the skinfold calliper, permitting a quantitative fat tissue indirect evaluation by measuring fat skinfolds. This non invasive measurement is easily accomplished if correctly executed. Nevertheless, if reliable results are to be obtained, they have to be performed by highly trained health technicians following a standard procedure, in order to minimize subjective operator decisions and individual variability.
The skinfold calliper is still commonly used but the need has been identified to invest on its upgrade for better reliability, sensitivity and accuracy.
This project, based on a strong interdisciplinary cooperation (joining Faculdades de Engenharia, Ciências da Nutrição e Desporto of Universidade do Porto) allowing a strong transversal cooperation between students of different areas and improvement of their personal and group skills and knowledge sharing, aims to upgrade a primary virtual instrument prototype developed in LabVIEW 7.1 for monitoring and assessing body nutritional health using a skinfold calliper. This specific equipment, based on a Harpenden calliper, was mechanically adapted to be instrumented with a digital gauge for making possible the calliper integration with the developed LabVIEW virtual instrument. Two miniaturized switches were also incorporated for permitting interaction between the trained health technician and the virtual instrument.
With this work the new version of the virtual instrument shall integrate a data base system for guaranteeing the access to individual historic records. Also, a final report shall be produced every time a test is completed.
The next step of the work will be concerned with the final performance evaluation of the calliper prototype as well as the analysis of the results, in order to assess the system applicability, repeatability and validity.
It shall also be compared with the performance of a traditional skinfold calliper.
Concerning the validity assessment Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA) will be used as a reference method to measure total and regional body composition including the estimation of lean soft tissue mass, fat mass and bone mineral content.
The study sample will be recruited among elderly population regarding the relevance of nutritional and functional ability on their health status, under their informed consent to collaborate in the present study.
As a final result it is expected to prove that such system shall significantly reduce the evaluation subjectivity and considerably increase the checking task efficiency.
Complementarily, other studies are also planned. A new system sensorization is intended to be developed, providing the calliper with an improved but low cost hardware characteristic for interfacing with a computer. Finally, it is also intended to study and to evaluate the use of a wireless system to avoid handling connecting cables.
The primary prototype results available at the moment will be presented by the student Miguel Maia in the annual Congress of Associação Portuguesa de Nutrição Entérica e Parentérica - APNEP, Porto, April 17th, 2007. |