Dragan Đurđević

Accurate and valid analysis of body composition is important for the diagnosis of nutritional status, training impact assessment, the body's response to nutritional and therapeutic interventions, growth and development of the organism, and health risk assessment. With the increasing prevalence of chronic non-communicable diseases, obesity, the need for different models and methods of body composition analysis has also increased. This review paper aimed to show the most commonly used methods for body composition analysis and to give a brief insight into the current techniques. The methods for analysing body composition vary in their accuracy and reliability and in practice the use of appropriate methods depends on the interest and the required accuracy, e.g. dual-energy X-ray absoptiometry (DXA) as the gold standard for determining bone mineral density, or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the gold standard for soft tissue and organ analysis. These methods, along with computed tomography (CT), hydrodensitometry and plethysmography, are routinely used in clinical medicine, and due to their complexity, availability and high prices, they are mostly used in sports medicine for research purposes. In sports medicine, the anthropometric method and bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) are mostly used, due to their simplicity and comfort for the examinees. The best assessment of body composition can be obtained by a combination of several methods - a multi-component model, which can increase the accuracy and reliability of the obtained data, and health risk can be assessed with greater certainty.

Keywords: body composition, nutritional status, anthropometry, DXA, BIA, sports medicine

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