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GE Healthcare Lunar is demonstrating technology to help physicians measure bone mineral density in children, as well as display systems that assess body composition and ascertain fat distribution in adults. GE Healthcare Lunar is demonstrating unique technology to help physicians measure bone mineral density in children, as well as display systems to enable licensed medical practitioners to simultaneously assess body composition and ascertain fat distribution in adults. This X-ray technology, called Dual-Energy X-ray Absorbtiometry or DXA scanning, measures and calculates bone, fat and muscle mass. GE is featuring this technology at the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) 29th Annual Meeting, Sept. 16-19, at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu.

Pediatric bone mineral density assessment can be challenging for physicians to monitor over time, because the skeleton of a child is growing simultaneously during the timeframe of monitoring. GE Lunar is launching enhanced enCORE software for its DXA systems that allows physicians to measure a child's bone density, fat and lean tissue mass composition, by factoring in and trending the child's age, height and other variables. This enables the physician to separate out the child's growth from other changes to the size and density of the skeleton.

GE-exclusive body composition measurements and calculations

GE Lunar also will feature its iDXA and Prodigy DXA systems that are now FDA-cleared to measure and calculate bone, fat and muscle mass for body composition analysis. Separate from bone mineral density assessment, a new Body Composition Software system can help people and their physicians establish goals for weight loss, exercise and diet regimes. DEXA body composition is a useful alternative to hydrostatic weighing and skin fold measurements.

Lunar systems work by:

• Measuring the regional and whole body bone mineral density (BMD), lean and fat tissue mass.
  
• Calculating derivative values that can be displayed in user-defined statistical formats and trends with color image mapping, and compared to reference populations at the sole discretion of the health care professional.

These body composition values are useful to licensed medical practitioners in their management of diseases and conditions where the disease and condition itself, or its treatment, can affect the relative amounts of patient fat and lean tissue. This GE Lunar Body Composition Software option does not diagnose disease, or recommend treatment regimens, or quantify treatment effectiveness. Only the licensed medical practitioner can make these judgments. Some of the diseases/conditions for which body composition values are useful include chronic renal failure, anorexia nervosa, obesity, AIDS/HIV and cystic fibrosis.

Lunar iDXA software also gives physicians dedicated reporting for body composition measurements and high percentage color fat mapping. Patients can easily follow the report divided into three compartments: lean mass, total body tissue per cent fat, and bone density.

The derivative values calculated with the Lunar Body Composition Software include bone mineral content (BMC), area, soft tissue mass, regional soft tissue mass, total soft tissue mass, fat free mass, regional/total soft tissue mass ratio, % fat, region % fat, total body % fat, Android % fat, Gynoid % fat, Android/Gynoid ratio (A/G ratio) and Body Mass Index (BMI).