Amazon Halo's body fat percentage scanner gives just as accurate a reading of a person's body fat calculation as methods that physicians use, according to a recent study conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital and Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
The Halo Body feature works using smartphone cameras; Halo users take four photos of their bodies, which are then combined into a 3D image. Amazon's feature then uses machine learning to calculate the user's body fat percentage.
The retail giant funded the study of the body feature and released the results June 16. Using data collected at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital and Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, the study had 134 participants of varying body types and included 82 women and 52 men.
Each study participant had their body fat measured through an X-ray technique that displays fat distribution through the body called dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). The researchers also used five different scales and a technique called air displacement plethysmography to calculate the participants' body fat.
The study showed that the body fat percentages calculated by Amazon Halo's Body feature were closest to the DXA results compared to the other methods tested.