Questions people actually ask.

No. Anyone can book a scan directly — you do not need an order from your own physician to find out what your body is made of.

You will complete a short health screening questionnaire when you book, as the supervising physician’s standing order will require. It takes about a minute — but it is not an order from your own doctor, and you do not need one.

There will be. Georgia requires that X-ray-based testing be performed under a licensed physician’s written standing order, and we are putting that arrangement in place before we open. We will name our medical director on this site, with credentials, once it is signed.

What it does not mean is that you are seeing a doctor. There is no consultation, no examination and no diagnosis — the standing order governs who may be scanned and how they are screened. Interpreting your results in the context of your medical history stays a conversation for your own physician.

We would rather explain this plainly than let it sound like more, or less, than it is.

The scan itself takes about ten minutes, and you are typically in and out in under half an hour.

We go through your report with you before you leave, and you take a copy home the same day. There is no waiting period and no follow-up appointment required.

A whole-body DEXA scan delivers a very low dose of X-ray. Published effective doses for whole-body composition scans on modern scanners are in the range of roughly 0.4 to 5 microsieverts, depending on the machine and scan mode.

For comparison, the average person in the United States receives about 3,000 microsieverts per year from natural background radiation alone — meaning a whole-body scan is comparable to a few hours of simply being alive outdoors, and a small fraction of a standard chest X-ray.

The dose is low, but it is not zero, which is why the screening questionnaire exists.

Yes. DEXA scanning is not appropriate during pregnancy, or if there is any chance you may be pregnant.

You should also postpone your scan if you have recently had a procedure using contrast dye, barium, or a radioactive tracer — these can interfere with the measurement. As a general rule, allow at least seven days after a contrast study and consult us if you are unsure.

Metal implants, joint replacements and surgical hardware are generally not a problem, but tell us in advance so we can account for them.

Comfortable clothing with no metal — no zippers, buckles, underwire, rivets or metal buttons. Athletic wear is close to ideal. Bring socks.

You stay fully clothed for the entire scan. You will be asked to remove jewellery, your watch, glasses and anything in your pockets.

DEXA is widely treated as the practical reference standard for body composition outside a research laboratory. On repeat scans of the same person under the same conditions, precision error for total body fat percentage is typically well under one percentage point.

That precision is the entire point. A bioimpedance scale can swing several percentage points based on how hydrated you are that morning, which makes it close to useless for tracking a twelve-week training block. DEXA is stable enough that a change in the number means a change in you.

A smart scale uses bioelectrical impedance: it sends a small current through your body and estimates fat from the resistance it meets. That estimate is heavily influenced by hydration, recent food, recent exercise and skin temperature.

DEXA does not estimate from a proxy. It passes two X-ray energies through you and directly measures how each tissue type attenuates them, which is why it can report fat, lean tissue and bone separately, and region by region.

For most people tracking a training or nutrition change, every three to six months is the sensible interval. That is long enough for a real change to exceed the measurement error, and short enough to correct course if what you are doing is not working.

Scanning monthly is generally a waste of money. Your first scan is the one that matters most, because everything afterwards is measured against it.

Come in reasonably normally hydrated and avoid a heavy meal in the two hours before your appointment. Skip your workout that morning if you can.

The most important thing is consistency between scans. If your first scan was on a Tuesday morning before breakfast, book the next one the same way — comparing a fasted morning scan to a post-lunch evening scan introduces noise you do not need.

A full report covering total and regional body fat percentage, fat mass and lean mass broken out by each arm, each leg and your trunk, an estimate of visceral fat, and bone mineral density.

We sit down and go through it with you, because a page of numbers you do not understand is not worth much. You keep the report.

No, and we are careful about this. Basemarks provides body composition and bone density measurement for wellness and fitness purposes. It is not a diagnostic service.

A whole-body scan produces one average bone density figure for your whole skeleton. It is not the site-specific hip and lumbar spine study a physician uses to diagnose low bone density. If anything in your report warrants a closer look, take it to your doctor — and we will tell you plainly if we think you should.

We have not published pricing yet. We will post exact prices — not a "from" price that changes at checkout — before booking opens.

No. Basemarks is cash-pay. Body composition scanning for wellness and fitness purposes is generally not a covered benefit under standard health insurance regardless of where you have it done.

Scans are typically eligible for payment with an HSA or FSA card, though eligibility is ultimately determined by your plan administrator, not by us.

Yes. The report is yours — email it, print it, hand it to whoever you like. We do not put it behind a login you have to keep paying for, and we do not need your trainer to be a partner of ours for you to share it with them.

We do not sell it, and we do not share it with advertisers. There are no advertising trackers on this website, which is a deliberate choice and an unusual one in this industry.

What we collect, how long we keep it and who processes it on our behalf is set out in our privacy policy.

We are opening in Duluth, Georgia, serving Gwinnett County and the north metro Atlanta area. Leave your email on our updates page and we will send you the address and the opening date as soon as they are confirmed.