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Sadly, in 2024, Skulpt has stopped selling their body composition scanner. I've really come to appreciate Skulpt as one of the best measures of body composition. I expect their app will become non-functional at some point, and the device will be effectively bricked. <br/>
Skulpt is a small device, a little bigger than a deck of playing cards that estimate body fat and muscle quality. I've found it to be one of the most useful and accurate ways of estimating body fat. It uses a similar principle to [[Body Fat Scales]], sending an imperceptible electrical current through the skin. However, there are a number of key benefits to Skulpt.
* Skulpt compares well with the gold standard for measuring body fat, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-energy_X-ray_absorptiometry DEXA], and the results appear to be far better than other approaches. See Validation Research below for details.
* Skulpt measures up to 24 specific body locations, and it can estimate overall body fat from three measurements on your triceps, abdominals, and quadriceps.
* One reason for having so many electrodes is to pass a current along and across the muscle fibers. This allows the Skulpt to estimate "muscle quality", something that I thought was nonsense until I reviewed the available research. This muscle quality gives a measurement that can detect muscular imbalances, something that can result in injury.
* If you enable "real time scanning" you can move the sensor around, and pausing between readings to find the app will take the reading that has area with the highest muscle quality as this is the one that's most directly over the muscle and in the correct position. This isn't obvious from the app, and I'd thought it took the last measurement. This feature means you can move the sensor around freely and the most accurate reading will be used. You mustn't position over the ends of a muscle though, as you could get a higher reading as the muscle merges into the tendon. Ideally, the app would automatically take the reading that has the highest muscle quality as this is the one that's most directly over the muscle and in the correct position, but this hasn't been implemented yet.
* Skulpt doesn't provide any indication of body weight, but by the same token, its estimate of body fat isn't dependent on body weight as an input. This may be one of the reasons Skulpt is as accurate as it is. (I use a Bluetooth scale to give me my weight measurement.)
* Skulpt doesn't use any data about which body part is being measured in its estimate. So, if you measure your quads, it will give the same value even if you tell it you're measuring your triceps. Again, this shows that Skulpt is not tweaking its value based on a muscle specific model or formula.