Interdevice Reliability of A-Mode Ultrasound to Measure Body Composition

A-mode ultrasound is a noninvasive and rapid method for measuring subcutaneous fat thickness and estimating body fat percentage (%BF). The validity and reliability of the BodyMetrix BX2000 A-mode ultrasound has been reported; however, the purpose of this study was to compare results from two machines to determine interdevice reliability. Ultrasound measures were repeated with two BX2000 machines at 10 body sites (chest, biceps, triceps, scapula, lower back, hip, waist, thigh, calf, axilla) on 42 males of varying age and leanness (age: 28.6 ± 11.9 y, BMI: 25.4 ± 4.6 kg/m2). The intraclass correlation coefficients ranged from 0.939 to 0.998 with standard errors of measurement from 0.31 to 0.58 mm of fat thickness. The only statistically significant difference (p \u3c 0.001) between devices was at the chest (0.33 mm) and scapula (0.37 mm). However, there was no difference between machines in the estimation of %BF (0.34%BF; p = 0.09). The interdevice reliability is similar to the previously reported test-retest reliability with no clinical significance between the two machines