Calibration and validation of EchoMRI™ whole body composition analysis based on chemical analysis of piglets, in...

A study was conducted to appraise a new EchoMRI™ device for body composition analysis (BCA) of infants and to compare it with dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), using chemical analysis as a reference method.The calibration part of the study included cross-validation comparisons between EchoMRI™ measurements of awake, anesthetized and dead piglets of the calibration set. It also included comparison of two different approaches to refining the calibration of EchoMRI™, by low- or by high-dimensional linear regressions. Only the low-dimensional approach was applied to DXA.The validation part yielded EchoMRI™ accuracy of 27 g and 70 g for fat and total water, respectively, on piglets scanned while anesthetized, as compared with 24 g and 57 g, respectively, for DXA.EchoMRI™ precision was found to be 4 g and 7 g for fat and total water, respectively, for anesthetized piglets, as compared to 16 g and 14 g, respectively, for DXA. The differences between fat measurements of awake, anesthetized and dead piglets can be statistically significant, but are comparable in magnitude to random errors.To summarize: Characterization of random errors by CV, especially that of fat, is not suitable for BCA, whereas absolute errors or errors relative to total body weight can be applicable. Low- and high-dimensional regressions offer nearly the same accuracy improvements. Improved DXA and EchoMRI™ offer nearly the same accuracy, within 1% of weight in fat, while EchoMRI™ has better precision, within 0.2 % of weight in fat for anesthetized and dead piglets as compared to DXA's 0.5-0.6%.