Health-related shape analysis of 3D body scanner data

Body scanner technology is becoming widely available and provides plenty of information about body anatomical structure. Nevertheless, there isn’t yet a well-established agreement about the correct way to turn the scanner digital data into knowledge about health related parameters. In this paper, we compare easily detectable geometrical features obtained from 3D scans of female obese (BMI > 30) subjects with body composition (measured with a DXA device) of the same subjects, in order to investigate which measurements on shape descriptors better correlate with torso and body fat. The results obtained show that some of the tested geometrical parameters have a relevant correlation, while other ones do not strongly correlate with body fat. These results support the role of digital anthropometry in investigating health-related physical characteristics and encourage the realization of further studies analyzing the relationships between shape descriptors and body composition.