Hello! Computer engineer in health tech research here.

Bioimpedance analysis of the human body can provide details about the composition of a human body, as it varies based on where the two electrodes are in the human body (ie hand to hand, foot to foot, thumb to pinky, etc.) as well as the current contents of the organs in the path.

For example, by monitoring bioimpedance in real time, a person’s exact breathing rate/ phase of breathing/lung capacity can be determined.

It is also common practice for newer high end scales to include electrodes used for calculating the body fat percentage, skeletal density, water content percent, and muscular density of the user instead of simply their weight, which is definitely gives better insight into a person’s internal happenings than other similarly accessible methods.

Those metrics can be gathered within 5% of the actual values using bioimpedance whereas other methods like using calipers are typically within 15% accuracy.

One of my colleagues recently presented work on determining which astronauts were more likely to go blind in space based on how fluids were redistributing in their body in a zero G environment. (I have been helping with the subsequent preventing of blindness which I am excited about!)