Hologic (Marlborough, Mass.) has signed an exclusive agreement with the University of Minnesota to be the distributor of the university-developed Dexalytics: Teams athletic performance software in North America.

The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Hologic’s Horizon dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) system already provides precise body composition assessment. What the cloud-based Dexalytics software is able to do is go beyond simply providing metrics of body fat percentage, total lean mass and total fat mass. The software uses a proprietary system to transform pages of clinical data into a manageable athlete score directly connected to sports performance. Team trainers, coaches and medical staff get sport- and position-specific body composition ranges for athletes, allowing them to track progress for an individual or group of athletes.

“We’re very excited to be working alongside an institution with a laser-sharp focus on forward-thinking innovation that mirrors our own,” said Pete Valenti, Hologic’s breast and skeletal health solutions division president. “This partnership presents an opportunity for our best-in-class technology to be used in impactful ways with new audiences, and helps differentiate elite athletic programs on the collegiate and professional levels by providing them with this cutting-edge tool to set their organizations and players apart from the pack.”

Hologic suggests that using the body composition parameters and comparing them could help create better insight into how to train a variety of body types. It can create a baseline for body types after injuries to understand how the body changes while also evaluating how well nutrition and training routines are working.

“A lot of time and resources are spent understanding what an athlete’s body can do, without a good understanding of what an athlete’s body is made of,” said Tyler Bosch, co-founder and head of research and development for Dexalytics. “This partnership provides a solution to that problem by providing accurate and reliable body composition measurements, with sport- and position-specific body type analyses. We visualize an athlete’s body to identify their individual, optimal body type.

Educational Technology Innovations in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota developed the Dexalytics software.