DEXA scans or tumor imaging scans can provide accurate measures of skeletal muscle mass, which is a key determinant of survival rates in cancer patients.

“in our research and other research we'll either look at dexas scans that allow you to look at fat mass and lean mass but what they've done in the cancer field is all these uh patients are getting scans to track the tumors and these scans will go through the skeletal muscle uh in different places and they're able to get really good quality measures of how much skeletal muscle mass you have and they're the ones who have pointed out that's really what's driving these um survival rates is this low muscle mass”