The aim of this study was to propose a novel method for reconstructing the external body envelope from the low dose biplanar X-rays of a person. The 3D body envelope was obtained by deforming a template to match the surface profiles in two X-rays images in three successive steps: global morphing to adopt the position of a person and scale the template׳s body segments, followed by a gross deformation and a fine deformation using two sets of pre-defined control points. To evaluate the method, a biplanar X-ray acquisition was obtained from head to foot for 12 volunteers in a standing posture. Up to 172 radio-opaque skin markers were attached to the body surface and used as reference positions. Each envelope was reconstructed three times by three operators. Results showed a bias lower than 7mm and a confidence interval (95%) of reproducibility lower than 6mm for all body parts, comparable to other existing methods matching a template onto stereographic photographs. The proposed method offers the possibility of reconstructing body shape in addition to the skeleton using a low dose biplanar X-rays system.

Body segment parameters (BSP) for each body׳s segment are needed for biomechanical analysis. To provide population-specific BSP, precise estimation of body׳s segments volume and density are needed. Widely used uniform densities, provided by cadavers׳ studies, did not consider the air present in the lungs when determining the thorax density. The purpose of this study was to propose a new uniform thorax density representative of the living population from 3D external body shape modeling. Bi-planar X-ray radiographies were acquired on 58 participants allowing 3D reconstructions of the spine, rib cage and human body shape. Three methods of computing the thorax mass were compared for 48 subjects: (1) the Dempster Uniform Density Method, currently in use for BSPs calculation, using Dempster density data, (2) the Personalized Method using full-description of the thorax based on 3D reconstruction of the rib cage and spine and (3) the Improved Uniform Density Method using a uniform thorax density resulting from the Personalized Method. For 10 participants, comparison was made between the body mass obtained from a force-plate and the body mass computed with each of the three methods. The Dempster Uniform Density Method presented a mean error of 4.8% in the total body mass compared to the force-plate vs 0.2% for the Personalized Method and 0.4% for the Improved Uniform Density Method. The adjusted thorax density found from the 3D reconstruction was 0.74g/cm(3) for men and 0.73g/cm(3) for women instead of the one provided by Dempster (0.92g/cm(3)), leading to a better estimate of the thorax mass and body mass.