Non-intrusive Body Composition Assessment from Full-body mmWave Scans

TL;DR

This paper proposes a non-intrusive, fast method for body composition assessment using full-body millimeter wave scans, enabling routine, privacy-preserving health monitoring without clinical imaging.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach leveraging synthetic mmWave-like data and multi-task learning to estimate body fat and visceral adipose tissue from clothing-covered scans.

Findings

Model predicts VAT with 1.0 L MAE.

Model estimates BFP with 3.2% MAE.

Feasibility demonstrated on real mmWave scans.

Abstract

Body composition assessment (BCA) provides detailed information about the distribution of different tissue types in the body, enabling more precise characterization of individuals than BMI or weight alone. Consistent and frequent BCA would be valuable for personalized medicine, but the gold standard methods for BCA, such as CT and MRI, are only practical for opportunistic monitoring of patients with clinical indications for imaging and are not suitable for routine use in the general population. Here, we consider an imaging modality which is not currently used in medical applications: millimeter wave (mmWave) radar. Commonly used in security settings, mmWave scans enable fast, non-intrusive, and privacy-preserving reconstruction of full body shape without the need to remove clothing. To demonstrate the feasibility of fast and convenient BCA from mmWave scans, we present a method for BCA value regression using a multi-task learning strategy that leverages synthetic mmWave-like point clouds derived from clinical imaging and parametric human models. We evaluate the model on a pilot cohort of real mmWave scans with bioimpedance-derived body fat measurements, supporting the feasibility of estimating VAT and body fat percentage (BFP) from mmWave data acquired through clothing in a standing posture. We find that the model can predict VAT and BFP with a mean absolute error of 1.0 L and 3.2\%, respectively, demonstrating the potential of mmWave scanning for routine BCA in a wide range of settings.