Patent ID: 7917202

Claim:
A method for determining an intracellular volume ICV of a patient having lean tissue compartments and adipose tissue compartments comprising the steps of: (a) determining an intracellular electrical resistance R mix of the patient by: (1) measuring the external cellular electrical resistance R E of the patient using a first frequency; (2) measuring the total electrical resistance R of the patient using a second frequency higher than the first frequency; and (3) deriving the intracellular electrical resistance R mix from the results in steps (a)(1) and (a)(2); (b) deriving the intracellular volume ICV of the patent by the iterative steps of: (1) inputting a typical start value for the intracellular volume as a start value; (2) deriving a value for a mass M LT of the lean tissue compartment of the patient; (3) deriving a value for a mass M AT of the adipose tissue compartment of the patient; (4) deriving a value for the mixed resistivity ρ mix of the adipose and lean tissue compartments of the patient using reference values for healthy subjects depending on the ratio M AT /M LT of the masses M AT of the adipose tissue compartment and M LT of the lean tissue compartment; (5) deriving a new value for the intracellular volume ICV using the value of ρ mix derives in step (b)(4) and the value of R mix from step (a); and (6) repeating steps (b)(1)-(b)(5) until sufficient convergence is achieved, using the value from step (b)(5) as a new start value for the step of (b)(1); (c) outputting the intracellular volume ICV of the patient determined in step (b).