For decades BMI has been the industry standard for determining if a person is at a healthy body weight. BMI categorizes each of us as underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese, or morbidly obese based on whether our weight is appropriate for their height. While this has been a healthcare standard, BMI has many detractors due to its limitations. Although BMI provides an easy to use tool, it is unable to account for weight distribution and body composition. This can lead to many people, especially athletes, being categorized as overweight or obese due to their level of muscle mass. Other measures of obesity have been proposed such as waist-to-hip ratio, which many healthcare professionals believed offered a more accurate assessment of body composition than BMI. However, it appears that BVI has come to the forefront of new body size assessment tools.
BVI is measured using a 7-foot white light scanner into which a person walks to be measured. A person's body image is scanned using a 3-D camera system with data from the scan being generated and saved into a computer system, which can calculate body volume as well as hundreds of other measurements including BMI, waist size, and waist-to-hip ratio. According to the BVI website, the scan takes approximately 6 seconds and does not use radiation or lasers.
For validation of the BVI system, a major research collaboration, the Body Benchmark Study, was conducted at several research centers in the UK, Europe and the U.S. with the U.S. tests being conducted at the Mayo Clinic. Results of these clinical trials indicated that:
BVI can accurately measure abdominal volume as a proportion of the whole body, giving an accurate assessment of central obesity, a major risk factor for a number of chronic health conditions.
BVI is able to detect differences in body shape and weight distribution in individuals with the same body mass index.
BVI measurements were shown to strongly correlate to heart health markers, suggesting that BVI might prove to be an accurate way to determine a person's risk for poor heart health.
BVI is an accurate and reliable tool to measure a person's obesity-related body characteristics such as waist size and hip size.
Based on these research studies, the BVI can be used to objectively track a person's body changes over time, reduces time and error inherent in manual measurements, and by using person-specific medical data can generate a health risk indicator.
This is a fascinating and important new development in obesity-related healthcare. This new system, should it become accepted by the medical community, has the possibility of providing new, more accurate ways to assess body shape, size, and obesity and associated health risks. This allows a very personalized approach to healthcare and intervention strategies to reduce one's risk for numerous chronic health conditions. While BVI appears to have many benefits, it is system that has to be used in a physician's office and it is unclear how quickly it will appear in hospitals and private practices. In the meantime, simple measurements we can all do, like BMI (18.5 - 24.9 is a healthy BMI range) and waist-to-hip ratio (0.8 or below for women and 0.95 or below for men), can help us aim for healthy body weight goals.
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