Accuracy of Smart Scales on Weight and Body Composition: Observational Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Smart scales are increasingly used at home by patients to monitor their body weight and body composition, but scale accuracy has not often been documented. OBJECTIVE: The goal of the research was to determine the accuracy of 3 commercially available smart scales for weight and body composition compared with dual x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) as the gold standard. METHODS: We designed a cross-sectional study in consecutive patients evaluated for DEXA in a physiology unit in a tertiary hospital in France. There were no exclusion criteria except patient declining to participate. Patients were weighed with one smart scale immediately after DEXA. Three scales were compared (scale 1: Body Partner [Téfal], scale 2: DietPack [Terraillon], and scale 3: Body Cardio [Nokia Withings]). We determined absolute error between the gold standard values obtained from DEXA and the smart scales for body mass, fat mass, and lean mass. RESULTS: The sample for analysis included 53, 52, and 48 patients for each of the 3 tested smart scales, respectively. The median absolute error for body weight was 0.3 kg (interquartile range [IQR] -0.1, 0.7), 0 kg (IQR -0.4, 0.3), and 0.25 kg (IQR -0.10, 0.52), respectively. For fat mass, absolute errors were -2.2 kg (IQR -5.8, 1.3), -4.4 kg (IQR -6.6, 0), and -3.7 kg (IQR -8.0, 0.28), respectively. For muscular mass, absolute errors were -2.2 kg (IQR -5.8, 1.3), -4.4 kg (IQR -6.6, 0), and -3.65 kg (IQR -8.03, 0.28), respectively. Factors associated with fat mass measurement error were weight for scales 1 and 2 (P=.03 and P<.001, respectively), BMI for scales 1 and 2 (P=.034 and P<.001, respectively), body fat for scale 1 (P<.001), and muscular and bone mass for scale 2 (P<.001 for both). Factors associated with muscular mass error were weight and BMI for scale 1 (P<.001 and P=.004, respectively), body fat for scales 1 and 2 (P<.001 for both), and muscular and bone mass for scale 2 (P<.001 and P=.002, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Smart scales are not accurate for body composition and should not replace DEXA in patient care. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03803098; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03803098.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".