Digital anthropometry: a critical review

Abstract

Anthropometry, Greek for human measurement, is a tool widely used across many scientific disciplines. Clinical nutrition applications include phenotyping subjects across the lifespan for assessing growth, body composition, response to treatments, and predicting health risks. The simple anthropometric tools such as flexible measuring tapes and calipers are now being supplanted by rapidly developing digital technology devices. These systems take many forms, but excitement today surrounds the introduction of relatively low cost three-dimensional optical imaging methods that can be used in research, clinical, and even home settings. This review examines this transformative technology, providing an overview of device operational details, early validation studies, and potential applications. Digital anthropometry is rapidly transforming dormant and static areas of clinical nutrition science with many new applications and research opportunities.

Allometric models of adult regional body lengths and circumferences to height: Insights from a three‐dimensional body image scanner

“…Until recently these somatic dimensions were largely measured using classical anthropometric tools such as measuring rods, calipers, and flexible tapes which are largely still used today as clinical measurements for tracking individual and population‐wide health (Heymsfield et al, ; Wang et al, ). While anthropometry for clinical needs are still being performed, commercial clothing industries and fitness programs are providing personalized measurements for individual customers.…”

Avaliação de posturas para antropometria digital considerando tempo, conforto e qualidade da malha obtida

“…In performing large-scale digital anthropometric studies, using 3D scanning, besides the choices of equipment (KOUCHI, 2012) and accompanying software, the researchers must consider the user participation (SCHWARZ-MUELLER; MARSHALL; SUMMERSKILL, 2018; SILVA; SALVALAIO; KINDLEIN, 2010) and also their own post-processing work (HEYMSFIELD et al, 2018;CUI;STRICKER, 2011). So, we can consider that in the scanning process the participants influence directly the quality of the mesh obtained and that the quality of the mesh accounts for most of the post-processing time and quality of the measurements taken.…”

“…Some of these limitations might be mitigated when using more than one Kinect at a time, so to cover more body surface area and ultimately take less time scanning (PARK; REED, 2014). Nevertheless, when adding more Kinects to the study, other concerns arise such as the alignment of the meshes (HIRSHBERG et al, 2011), calibration of the equipment (HEYMSFIELD et al, 2018;KOUCHI, 2012) and structural support (SCHWARZ-MUELLER; MARSHALL; SUMMERSKILL, 2018) to hold all the equipment in fixed positions or moving together. In previous work, we developed a scanning platform that was used in this study to attempt to solve some of the sensors positioning and moving together issues.…”

“…Another point regarding time is that there might be a relation between scanning time and the quality of the mesh. Shorter scanning times tend to leave holes and blank spaces that add to the post-processing time of the digital model (HEYMSFIELD et al, 2018;SHU et al, 2013). The ideal time is such that the participants are comfortable enough that they can hold the posture for the determined time and that the scan is as complete as possible.…”

Longitudinal anthropometry of children and adolescents using 3D-body scanning

“…In the last years, digital laser-scanning anthropometry has replaced calipers, weight scales, tape measures and other tools that have been used for centuries to assess body dimensions [ 4 ]. Three-dimensional (3D-) whole body scanning provides a promising technique to gather anthropometric data, granting opportunity to assess dozens of individual body measures at once with high accuracy and within only a few seconds of time [ 5 ].…”