Anthropometric analysis of 3D ear scans of Koreans and Caucasians for ear product design

Abstract

CCW: cavum concha width; CV: coefficient of variation; EB: ear breadth; EL: ear length; SD: standard deviation; SE: sampling error; 3D: 3 dimensional.

A systematic review on ear anthropometry and its industrial design applications

“…Ear growths throughout the whole lifetime were presented for Germans (Niemitz et al, 2007) and Italians (Sforza et al, 2009). When comparing populations, Alexander, Stott, Sivakumar, and Kang (2011) reported that Indians had larger ear length than Caucasians and African/Afro‐Caribbean peoples, significantly in males and not significantly in females, Lee et al (2018) found that Caucasians had wider but shorter ears than Koreans, and Hossein, Payam, and Masih (2018) determined that Hamadan men had significantly greater ear size than Caucasian men. In regard to gender differences, these investigations revealed that females have smaller ear length and width than males for Korean (Jung & Jung, 2003), Turkish (Barut & Aktunc, 2006; Tatlisumak et al, 2015), and Italian peoples (Sforza et al, 2009).…”

“…Recently, researchers have conducted ear anthropometry with 3D technologies. Different techniques have been applied to collect the external ear data, including stereophotogrammetry (Sforza et al, 2009), CT (Wang, Dong, Zhao, Bai, & Wu, 2011; Yu et al, 2015), and 3D scanning technology (Chiou et al, 2016; Ji et al, 2018; Lee et al, 2016; Lee et al, 2018; Modabber et al, 2018; Zhu, Ji, Gao, & Hu, 2017). Certain information, including specific dimensions and surface information, was extracted from 3D models for further analysis.…”

“…Cross‐sectional studies were conducted to examine the differences in ear dimensions among various ethnicities. Koreans had larger ear length and smaller ear width than Caucasians (Lee et al, 2018). Indians had the largest ear sizes on ear length and width, followed by Caucasians, and Africans (Alexander et al, 2011).…”

“…Based on the objectives of different studies, researchers selected different ear dimensions for analysis. Beyond the landmarks and dimensions mentioned above, Stavrakos et al (2016) and Lee et al (2018) organized the previous terminology and defined new landmarks and dimensions particularly for product design use. Selected landmarks and dimensions are shown in Figure 5.…”

“…Ear anthropometry contains studies on the size and shape of the external ear, as anthropometric reference for ear‐related product design. The external ear, also named as auricle or pinna, includes helix, antihelix, tragion, antitragion, lobule, cymba concha, cavum concha, triangular fossa, intertragic incisure, and ear canal (Lee et al, 2018), as shown in Figure 2. Previous research mostly used traditional (Farkas, Posnick, & Hreczko, 1992; Kalcioglu, Miman, Toplu, Yakinci, & Ozturan, 2003; Sforza et al, 2009) and photogrammetric (Meijerman, Van Der Lugt, & Maat, 2007; Niemitz, Nibbrig, & Zacher, 2007) methods to measure selected ear dimensions.…”