Short- and long-term reproducibility of body surface gastric mapping using the Gastric Alimetry® system

Abstract

Background: Many diagnostic tests for gastroduodenal symptoms, such as gastric emptying scintigraphy (GES), gastric emptying breath tests (GEBT), and electrogastrography (EGG) show variable intra-individual reproducibility over time. This study investigated the short- and long-term reproducibility of body surface gastric mapping (BSGM), a non-invasive test for assessing gastric function, in controls and patients with chronic gastroduodenal disorders.

Methods: Participants completed three standardized BSGM tests using Gastric Alimetry® (Alimetry, New Zealand). The test encompassed a fasting baseline (30 min), a 482 kCal standard meal, and a 4 h postprandial recording. The first two tests were >6 months apart and the last occurred ~1 week after the second test, to evaluate long and short-term reproducibility.

Results: Fourteen patients with upper gastrointestinal symptoms and 14 healthy controls were recruited. There were no significant differences in any BSGM metrics between the tests at short and long term (all p > 0.180). Lin's concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) for the primary metrics were high, ranging from 0.58 to 0.96, with intra-individual coefficients of variance (CV_intra) ranging from 0.2% to 1.9%. Reproducibility was higher, and intra-individual variation lower, than in previous studies of GES (CCC = 0.54-0.83, CV_intra = 3%-77%), GEBT (CV_intra = 8%-11%), and EGG (CV_intra = 3%-78%).

Conclusions: BSGM spectral metrics demonstrate high reproducibility and low intra-individual variation at both short and long term, with superior results to comparable tests. The high reproducibility of Gastric Alimetry supports its role as a diagnostic aid for gastric dysfunction and a reliable tool for evaluating treatment outcomes and disease progression over time.

Keywords: body surface gastric mapping; disorders of gut‐brain interaction; functional gastrointestinal disorders; gastric dysrhythmia; gastric electrophysiology mapping with validated patient symptom profiling; gastric myoelectrical activity; reproducibility.