SenseWear Armband (SW) is a multisensor monitor to assess physical activity and energy expenditure. Its prediction algorithms have been updated periodically. Purpose: To validate SW in children, adolescents and adults. Methods: The most recent SW algorithm 5.2 (SW5.2) and the previous version 2.2 (SW2.2) were evaluated for estimation of energy expenditure during semi-structured activities in 35 children, 31 adolescents and 36 adults with indirect calorimetry as reference. Energy expenditure estimated from waist-worn ActiGraph GT3X+ data (AG) was used for comparison. Results: Improvements in measurement errors were demonstrated with SW5.2 compared to SW2.2, especially in children and for biking. The overall mean absolute percent error with SW5.2 was 24% in children, 23% in adolescents and 20% in adults. The error was larger for sitting and standing (23-32%) and for basketball and biking (19-35%), compared to walking and running (8-20%). The overall mean absolute error with AG was 28% in children, 22% in adolescents and 28% in adults. The absolute percent error for biking was 32-74% with AG. In general, SW and AG underestimated energy expenditure. However, both methods demonstrated a proportional bias, with increasing underestimation for increasing energy expenditure level, in addition to the large individual error. Conclusions: SW provides measures of energy expenditure level with similar accuracy in children, adolescents and adults with the improvements in the updated algorithms. Although SW captures biking better than AG, these methods share remaining measuremens errors requiring further improvements for accurate measures of physical activity and energy expenditure in clinical and epidemiological research.
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