How to Read Your DEXA Scan Report, Every Number Explained

You did the smart thing. You booked a DEXA scan, laid still for seven minutes, and walked out holding the most accurate picture of your body that exists outside a research lab. Then you looked at the printout — and hit a wall of grams, percentiles, T-scores, and acronyms that felt like decoding a foreign language.

You're not alone. "How do I read my DEXA results?" is one of the most common questions we hear from the hundreds of thousands of people who use DEXASCAN.COM every year. So here's the full translation — whether your clinic handed you a raw Hologic machine printout or a DEXASCAN.COM body composition report.

Start With the Big Four

Every DEXA report, regardless of format, is built around four headline numbers. Read these first, and read them together — because the story is in the combination, not any single figure.

Body fat percentage is your true fat level, measured — not estimated. A healthy optimal range for women is roughly 21–32%; for men, roughly 10–20%. One important heads-up: DEXA counts all fat, including fat inside the trunk and around organs, so it typically reads a few points higher than your smart scale or calipers. That doesn't mean the scan is wrong — it means the other methods were flattering you. Never compare a DEXA number to a bioimpedance number; compare your DEXA to your next DEXA.

Lean mass is everything that isn't fat or bone: muscle, organs, and water. During any weight loss — and especially on GLP-1 medications — this is the number to defend. Weight going down while lean mass holds steady is the definition of winning.

ALMI (Appendicular Lean Mass Index) takes just the muscle in your arms and legs and divides it by your height squared. It's the metric researchers use to screen for sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss) and the number longevity physicians care about most. Above roughly 5.5 kg/m² for women and 7.0 for men clears the sarcopenia screen — but the percentile matters more than the raw number, and higher is better.

Bone density T-score compares your bone mineral density to a healthy 30-year-old. Above -1.0 is normal, -1.0 to -2.5 is osteopenia (early bone loss worth acting on), and below -2.5 is osteoporosis. Your Z-score answers a different question: how does your bone compare to people your own age and sex? Read them together — a T-score of -1.4 with a Z-score of 0 means "on the watchlist, but typical for your age."

Reading a Hologic Printout: Three Things Nobody Tells You

Most DEXA clinics in America scan on Hologic systems, and many hand you the machine's native report. It's dense, but three keys unlock it.

First: everything is in grams. The "DXA Results Summary" table reports fat mass, lean mass, and total mass in grams, region by region. Divide by 454 to get pounds — so a total fat mass of 12,922 g is 28.5 lbs of fat. The "Lean+BMC" column is lean tissue plus bone mineral content, which is the figure most people mean when they say "lean mass."

Second: the YN and AM percentile columns run in opposite directions. This is the single most misread part of a Hologic report. YN means Young Normal — you versus healthy twenty-somethings. AM means Age Matched — you versus your own age group. Here's the trap: for fat measures, a low percentile is good (3rd percentile body fat means leaner than 97% of your peers). For lean measures, a low percentile is a warning (8th percentile ALMI means less muscle than 92% of your peers). The same column position, opposite meanings. Countless people have celebrated a low lean percentile or panicked over a low fat percentile.

Third: Hologic gives you visceral fat three ways — use the Area. The Adipose Indices box lists estimated VAT as mass (g), volume (cm³), and area (cm²). The risk thresholds you'll see quoted everywhere — under 100 is healthy, 100–160 is increased, over 160 is high — refer to the area in cm². Visceral fat is the deep abdominal fat packed around your organs, and it's the single most important metabolic risk number on the report. Watching it fall is a bigger win than watching the scale fall.

Reading a DEXASCAN.COM Report

Clinics in our network can provide results as a DEXASCAN.COM body composition report, which does much of this translation for you: pounds instead of grams, plain-English status labels next to every metric, a health score, and visual scales showing where you sit in each range. The numbers underneath are identical — fat mass, lean mass, ALMI with percentile, fat mass index, android/gynoid ratio, regional breakdown, muscle symmetry, and bone density with both scores.

Two sections deserve special attention. The android/gynoid ratio (A/G) tells you whether you store fat "apple" style around the belly or "pear" style on hips and thighs — below 1.0 is the pear pattern, which carries lower cardiovascular risk. And the muscle symmetry check compares left versus right limbs: differences under 5% are balanced, 5–10% is mild and common on your dominant side, and over 10% is worth correcting with single-limb exercises before it becomes an injury.

The Trend Is the Truth

Here's the mindset shift that makes all of this useful: one scan is a snapshot; two scans are a story. A single report tells you where you are. The comparison to your next scan — same facility, same machine, same time of day, similar hydration — tells you whether your training, nutrition, or medication is actually working. Fat mass down with lean mass stable is success. Lean mass falling faster than fat is a signal to raise protein, add resistance training, and talk to your physician. That feedback loop, repeated every three to six months, is worth more than any single number on the page.

Get the Free Visual Guides

We built two companion PDFs that walk through real (anonymized) sample reports with color-coded scales, annotated tables, and 60-second cheat sheets:

How to Read Your DEXA Scan Results — a 3-page visual walkthrough of a DEXASCAN.COM report, covering all four headline numbers, VAT zones, the index grid, regional symmetry, and bone scores.

How to Read Your Hologic DEXA Report — a 4-page decoder for the raw machine printout, including the grams conversion, the YN/AM percentile trap, all three VAT numbers, and the bone density page.

And if you haven't had your scan yet — or it's been more than six months — the best way to use everything above is with your own numbers in hand. Find a trusted DEXA provider near you from 400+ partner clinics nationwide.

This article and the linked guides are for informational and educational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. Reference ranges are population-based approximations and vary by machine, software, and demographics. Always review your results with a qualified healthcare provider.