Automated Extraction of Anthropometric Data from 3D Images

The use of 3D scanning systems for the capture and measurement of human body dimensions is becoming commonplace. While the ability of available scanning systems to record the surface anatomy of the human body is generally regarded as acceptable for most applications, effective use of the images to obtain anthropometric data requires specially developed data extraction software. However, for large data sets, extraction of useful information can be quite time consuming. A major benefit therefore is to possess an automated software program that quickly facilitates the extraction of reliable anthropometric data from 3D scanned images. In this paper the accuracy and variability of two fully automated data extraction systems (Cyberware WB-4 scanner with Natick-Scan software and Hamamatsu BL Scanner with accompanying software) are examined and compared with measurements obtained from traditional anthropometry. In order to remove many confounding variables that living humans introduce during the scanning process, a set of clothing dressforms was chosen as the focus of study. An analysis of the measurement data generally indicates that automated data extraction compares favorably with standard anthropometry for some measurements but requires additional refinement for others.