A Low Cost 3D Foot Scanner for Custom-Made Sports Shoes

Abstract

Conventional methods to obtain foot anthropometry for custom made sports shoes using anthropometer, callipers and measuring tapes are inaccurate due to the complex anatomy and curvature of the instep, foot arc and related joints. They lead to poor repeatability and large variances, particularly when measurements are taken of different people. Measurements from 3D model have been claimed as a perfect tool to obtain anthropometric data. However a commercial 3D foot scanner to create a 3D foot model can be very costly. In this paper we propose a low cost 3D foot scanner system by integrating available image capture technology such as the Kinect®, appropriate 3D scanning software and a foot scanner rig. An experiment was conducted to compare the anthropometry data taken using conventional method and from the 3D model. The differences recorded for all regions were found to be less than 5%, suggesting that the 3D model produced by this method is accurate. The use of 3D scanner has also decreased the measurement duration, thus increasing the repeatability whilst decreasing human errors that normally occur during the measurement process.

Measurements agreement between low-cost and high-level handheld 3D scanners to scan the knee for designing a 3D printed knee brace

“…Nevertheless, using 3D scans for orthotics is a new way and most of the studies have been done on foot [ 12 , 15 , 24 , 25 ]. Therefore, some limitations and questions are still pending, especially concerning the best position of the body part for the scan, the accuracy of the 3D scans and their use for other body parts [ 26 , 27 ].…”

“…The last 5 years have seen development of low-cost handheld 3D scanners, which could be of help providing 3D scanners to each orthotist. Low-cost 3D scanners have been proven to be accurate in measuring human foot anthropometry [ 12 , 15 ], but shape and size of the lower limbs, such as the knee, cannot be compared to foot shape. Concerning lower limbs, only one study looked at differences between manual measurement and handheld 3D scanners [ 28 ].…”

Developing a Three-Dimensional (3D) Assessment Method for Clubfoot—A Study Protocol

“…In 2012, Microsoft Company released the Kinect Xbox for playing video games (Figure 2 ; Taha et al, 2014 ). Nowadays, it is used for other purposes, for instance, as a 3D measurement tool to obtain accurate anthropometric measurements from normal feet, and clinical analysis tool in the medical and rehabilitation areas (Taha et al, 2014 ). Also, it is an inexpensive 3D scanning tool which has been established to have high accuracy (1 mm).…”

“…However, both MRI and CT are expensive procedures for quantifying and evaluating the severity of clubfoot at each stage of clubfoot casting intervention, and would require sedation or anesthesia for infants to make them calm or relax during the MRI procedures. Few studies used commercially available 3D scanner to evaluate the structure and shapes of the normal foot, and to evaluate the anthropometry of normal feet, including foot length and width, heel width, lateral malleolus height, foot width circumference, and lateral malleolus height (Lee et al, 2012 ; Ma and Luximon, 2014 ; Taha et al, 2014 ). To the best of our knowledge, only one study used the commercially available 3D scanner to quantify the structures of foot in rheumatoid arthritis patients (De Mits et al, 2012 ).…”

A Low Cost and Easy to Use Setup for Foot Scanning

“…In [3] a remote service for 3D reconstruction from uploaded video has been proposed. In [4] a foot scanner based on Kinect sensor has been proposed. Many free or low cost software packages can also be used to turn low cost depth sensors into 3D scanners, but manual acquisition of feet with a portable devices is not easy and the online reconstruction of the geometry proposed in some applications like the KinectFusion [5] may result in inaccurate geometries when capturing a complete object due to registration error accumulation.…”