Development of Bio-impedance Analyzer (BIA) for Body Fat Calculation

Munawar A Riyadi (Department of Electrical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Kampus Tembalang, Semarang 50275, Indonesia)
A Nugraha (Department of Electrical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Kampus Tembalang, Semarang 50275, Indonesia)
M B Santoso (Department of Electrical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Kampus Tembalang, Semarang 50275, Indonesia)
D Septaditya (Department of Electrical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Kampus Tembalang, Semarang 50275, Indonesia)
T Prakoso (Department of Electrical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Kampus Tembalang, Semarang 50275, Indonesia)

Proceeding of the Electrical Engineering Computer Science and Informatics
Vol 3: EECSI 2016

Common weight scales cannot assess body composition or determine fat mass and fat-fress mass that make up the body weight. This research propose bio-impedance analysis (BIA) tool capable to body composition assessment. This tool uses four electrodes, two of which are used for 50 kHz sine wave current flow to the body and the rest are used to measure the voltage produced by the body for impedance analysis. Parameters such as height, weight, age, and gender are provided individually. These parameters together with impedance measurements are then in the process to produce a body fat percentage. The experimental result shows impressive repeatability for successive measurements (stdev ≤ 0.25% fat mass). Moreover, result on the hand to hand node scheme reveals average absolute difference of total subjects between two analyzer tools of 0.48% (fat mass) with maximum absolute discrepancy of 1.22% (fat mass). On the other hand, the relative error normalized to Omron's HBF-306 as comparison tool reveals less than 2% relative error. As a result, the system performance offers good evaluation tool for fat mass in the body.