Overview
This tool allows the bulk calculation of anthropometric Z-scores and percentiles with a variety of growth charts (on initial release, 14 different charts with 33 anthropometric measures). The calculations are done in the R programming language using the peditools package: Chou JH et al., J Med Internet Res 2020;22(1):e16204, available open access as PDF
Availablity of this tool is limited to only 25 active hours total per month because I'm using a free tier of shinyapps.io. Apologies if the tool is unavailable when you access it.
Here's a link to the tool Before clicking this link, the information below may be helpful so that you'll have a properly structured CSV file beforehand.
Instructions
- the hardest part is crafting the CSV data file to upload, particularly getting the numeric ages correct
- I do not want to encourage sending protected health information (e.g., dates of birth), so this tool does not help you calculate the ages
- the following sample Excel / CSV files might help you get started
- CSV file with some example premature baby data. Used for the first 3 screenshots below.
- Excel file with columns for date of birth + measurement and initial gestational age. Example of calculating age in months, years, post-menstrual age in weeks, and corrected age. Used for the last screenshot below. In this example, the columns with green headers have user entered data, whereas the columns with the orange headers are calculated. Suggestion: copy and paste the columns that you want into a new file and then save as CSV for import.
Detailed steps
- Select chart and measure
- Select a chart family (e.g., Fenton 2013)
- Select the specific anthropometric measure (e.g., weight)
- Review additional information, including
- Source for the growth chart calculations; make sure you selected the right chart
- Units of age and measurement; permissible age range
- Upload CSV data file to analyze
- Click the browse button and upload a comma-separated value (CSV) text file; the top few rows will be displayed
- The CSV file MUST include a header row.
- Minimum of 3 columns: age, gender ('m' or 'f'), and measurements
- Age must be completely numeric (no 'w', or 'm', or 'd'; no fractions)
- Use dropdowns to select the appropriate columns for age, gender, and measurement values
- the selections are taken from the header row of the CSV file
- View and download output
- A table will be displayed with calculated Z-scores and percentiles.
- The "Download output" button will save the output onto your own computer.
- Plot all points on a growth chart
- On the 'Growth Chart' tab, you can opt to plot all the points from the CSV file
- This can be helpful to look for outliers — more info will appear if you hover over a point
- Or, if all the CSV file data is from a single individual, it becomes a universal growth chart generator
- You can choose which percentile lines to plot
- The plot is interactable — you can zoom in / out, pan, save the plot, hover over points and lines, etc.
Click thumbnails below to enlarge images
