Page 13 - Anthropometry, Apparel Sizing and Design

8 Anthropometry, Apparel Sizing and Design

leg, arm, or face for the design of pressure garments. As they can be taken close to the
body, they can be used along with the static scanners to scan the body areas such as top
of the head, groin, underarm, and side seam area, which are difficult to scan with static
scanners.
Handheld scanners are relatively new in the market, and their applications are
slowly being explored. Conkle et al. (2017) conducted an anthropometric study on
more than 400 children (0–5years) to define the malnutrition status and report prom-
ising results with a handheld scanner. Salleh et al. (2018) demonstrate the possibility
of developing a body measurement system using a handheld scanner. Data acquisition
was done using a handheld scanner, and a computer program developed using
MATLAB was used to transform the data into a 3-D body model.
While the booth-type and handheld scanners can only be used by professionals
under controlled conditions, a range of low-cost consumer devices like webcams,
smartphones, or Kinect can be used directly by customers to scan themselves. How-
ever, the quality of such scans remains doubtful. A game-changing development in the
field of anthropometry for garment industry is reported by the Indian arm of a United
States-based company Mirrorsize (mirrorsize.com). Their free to download mobile
app allows a customer to scan her fully clothed body in a matter of seconds, anywhere,
anytime (Fig. 1.1C). The app uses advanced computer vision, deep learning, 3-D, and
mesh processing technologies, to generate a body measurement chart with up to 95%
accuracy in real time. The app is device-agnostic and can be run on any mobile phone
or tablet. Syncing the app with websites of online clothing retail companies will allow
the customer to pick a garment from a collection and drape it on their 3-D avatar for
virtual try-on and virtual fit testing. Mirrorsize is being tested by companies in the
United States and EU for possible integration. The company is in talks with major
offline and online retailing brands in India to launch its product in the market in 2019.
Attempts have also been made to generate 3-D scans without the use of any scan-
ning device. In a recent paper, Molyboga and Makeev (2018) employed powerful
algorithms to obtain 2-D contour of the human body from a single image of a clothed
person. Various filters and detectors are used to extract the parameters of 2-D slices of
selected body areas. Three-dimensional model is subsequently generated from the
contour and body measurements.
It may thus be concluded that exciting developments have been driving the field of
whole-body scanning. With rapid developments in mobile and computing technologies,
body measurement technology has gone from being an expensive, time-consuming,
cumbersome, and centralized activity controlled by garment manufacturer to an easy,
free, private, and completely individualized process controlled by the user. Future
research will be targeted on the integration of this large volume of scan data into online
and offline retail operations to offer value-added customized services to customers.

1.2.2 Applications of 3-D body scanning
In addition to acquiring data for the development of body size charts, visualization of
3-D scan data can be used for further understanding of the complex geometry and
diversity of human forms. Three-dimensional data from real bodies allow designers
to see the peculiarity of each body type and frame customized patternmaking rules