2010 International Conference on Intelligent Computation Technology and Automation

Human Body Dimensions Extraction From 3D Scan Data

Xiaozhi Li 1, 2 Xiaojiu Li 1, 2
1. School of Art and Clothing
2. Key Laboratory for Advanced Textile Composite of Ministry of Education
Tianjin Polytechnic University, TJPU
Tianjin, P. R. China
E-mail: shelly_lixz@yahoo.cn
E-mail: lixiaojiu02@yahoo.com.cn

Abstract—3D body dimensions extracting is the basis that 3D

body scanner evolve in clothing applications. In this paper,
the body point cloud is acquired by 3D body scanner
developed by our team. The initial point cloud is processed
for reconstructed body triangular mesh model which is used
to extract the body dimensions. The methods of processing
the point cloud and constructed body model are simply
discussed and the detail discussion can be found in my paper
that is being published. In order to calculate the body
dimensions, the reference points are identified according to
the characteristic of the feature contours. Then the body
dimensions, including length size and girth size, are
extracted. By measuring 10 feature sizes of different bodies,
the factors that affect the dimensional accuracy is analysed.
The result shows the method is effective to extracting the
body dimensions.
Keywords-3D body scanner, body dimensions, made-to-
measure, 3D body model, reference points, feature dimensions
1. INTRODUCTION
With the development of 3D scanning technology, the
applications of 3D body scanners are now rapidly
evolving into many areas, typical including
anthropometric research, the clothing industry, the film
industry, computer animation and medicine [1] [2]. For
clothing applications, the body is scanned by 3D body
scanner and the dimensions related to clothing are derived
from the digital body model. These dimensions are then
transferred to apparel CAD systems for designing clothes.
The patterns are sent to cut bed to cut single layer. This is
so-called made-to-measure (MTM) which creates the
individualized clothes. The specific process is shown as
Fig.1.
MTM is compatible with the current trend that people
pursue and has been the main means of clothes producing
[3]. The 3D body scanning and body dimensions
extracting are the basis of MTM as Fig.1 describes.
Body dimensions extracting
by 3D body scanner
Apparel CAD
system
Clothing styles
selecting
Automatically Modifying patterns
creating patterns interactively
Single layer
cutting
Quick sewing
system
Figure 1. Made-to-measure chain
2. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF 3D BODY MODEL
In this paper, the 3D body scanner developed by our
team [4] [5] is used to collect the body data. In the
process of scanning the subject, in order to pick up the
data in the armpits and the inner thighs, upper limbs and
torso has the angle about 30~45 degree and the lower
limbs separate naturally with two legs flushing with the
shoulder. After the whole body is scanned, scan line point
cloud [6] of the rear and the front of the body are
reconstructed (shown as Fig.3(a), the points of arms are
not got) and the points of every scan line are stored in
computer in sequence. Because of physical properties of
measuring device, environment of measurement, light and
the defects of calibration algorithm, the initial body point
cloud include some noisy points and holes. In order to
improve the surface reconstruction speed and quality, the
initial point cloud should be processed shown as Fig.2.

978-0-7695-4077-1/10 $26.00 © 2010 IEEE 441

DOI 10.1109/ICICTA.2010.849
 Initial scan line point cloud

The front and the rear registering

Point cloud denoising and smoothing

Filling holes

Point cloud reducing

Figure 2. The initial point cloud processing

By registering the corresponding markers pasted on

the body before scanning the body, the front and the rear
can be integrated as a whole body model [7]. The noisy
points can be removed by the distance-based algorithm
and the method of mean curvature flows [5]. Then the
points of every scan line are fitted into a closed curve by
the method of cubic parametric spline and the holes
disappear. The points are so dense along the measuring
direction that they are not suitable for reconstructing the
surface model. The algorithm of chord length between
consecutive points to reduce the point data [8] is
employed to reduce the point cloud. The processed point
cloud is shown as Fig.3 (b).
y point satisfies the equation as following:
x
z m _ xi1  m _ xi ! 0&&m _ xi  m _ xi 1  0 (1)
Figure 4. Body triangular mesh model
3. 3D BODY DIMENSIONS EXTRACTING
A. Identification of reference points
The human body dimensions mainly include body
height, neck girth, breast girth, waist girth, hip girth and
crotch height. The additional dimensions include shoulder
width, waist height, and hip height and so on. The basic
idea of extracting body dimensions is that the body is
divided into several parts where is used to search the
feature position in proportion of plus and minus 5% range
[11]. In order to get the dimensions, the reference point
should be found out at first.
The armpit points and crotch point have been
identified when the body triangular mesh model is
constructed. The neck point includes front neck point
(FNP), side neck point (SNP) and back neck point (BNP)
[12] [13]. The SNP is the hollowest point of the part that
connects the head and torso of human orthographic
projection. The digital model of the body standing front,
find the x-value of best side point of every scan line, if the

(a) Initial point cloud (b) Processed point cloud Then this point is SNP shown as Fig.5. The root of the
neck can be determined by SNP, so the FNP and BNP are
Figure 3. 3D body point cloud easy to identify.
The processed point cloud is divided into four parts:
human torso above underarm points, human torso below
underarm points, left leg and right leg. Every part is
constructed into polygon mesh by the method of one-to-
one branching [9] and this method is also used to connect
the human torso above underarm points and the human
Figure 5. Front contour of the body
torso below underarm points. The connection between
human torso and legs refers to the method of one-to-many Breast point (BP) is the highest point of the body
branching [10]. The body triangular mesh model is breast. In order to determine the waist line, the exact
constructed shown as Fig.4. location of the waist line must be ascertained by the
method of identify a waist point (WP). According to the

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proportion of body, the waist point is the most concave
point at the waist of the body profile. Hip point (HP) is
the highest point of the body hip. The digital model of the
body standing side, BP, WP and HP can be identified by
the method of identifying the SNP shown as Fig.6.
In which y p is the y-coordinate of the cross section,
1
D is the ratio coefficient, ( xn , yn , zn ) and ( xm , ym , zm ) are
the coordinates of the intersection edge’s endpoints.
Choose a point on cross section and find the nearest edge
from it as the first intersection edge. Then find the
triangle that the intersection edge belongs to and the other
edge that intersects with this triangle is the second
intersection edge whose node with cross section is the
second point of girth line. Find other triangle intersecting
with the second edge and identify the third intersection
edge. Go on this method until all intersection points are
found out. Connect the intersection points by order and
the girth line is constructed which is made up by many
small segments. The sum of the small segments’ length is
the size of girth line. By this method, the breast girth line,
waist girth line and hip girth line can be extracted by the
point of BP, WP and HP shown as Fig.7.

Figure 6. The body profile

Shoulder points (SP) are the endpoints of the body

shoulder that connect upper limbs and torso. When the
digital model of the body stands front, the x-value’s
difference of the most side points of adjacent scan line is (a) Bustline (b) Hipline
larger at shoulders than at arms. According to this
characteristic, find a threshold G through, if the point
satisfies the equation as following:

° m _ xi 1  m _ xi  G
­ (c) Neck contour (d) Waistline
® (2)
°̄ m _ xi 1  m _ xi ! G Figure 7. Cross-section contour

Then it is shoulder point shown as Fig.5. C. Result of body dimensions

Using VC++ and OpenGL to program the above
B. Extraction of feature dimensions of the body algorithm, the body model is reconstructed and the
After the reference points identified, it is easy to dimensions can be extracted automatically. Table 1 is the
calculate the feature dimensions of the body. There are body dimensions of Fig.4.
two types of body dimensions: one is the length size, the
other is the girth size. The length size is easy to calculate, TABLE 1. TABLE 1 BODY DIMENSIONS IN FIG.4
such as body height, it is the vertical distance between the Unit:cm
highest point and lowest point of the body data. Intersect body height 163.5 waist height 103.7
a plane with the body triangular mesh model, and the hip height 78.3 crotch height 73.5
intersecting line is girth line. Then the girth size can be breast height 117.5 hip girth 87.8
calculated. The values of the points on the intersecting waist girth 64.0 breast girth 81.1
line can be calculated by pro rata relationship: neck girth 34.5 shoulder width 36.9

y p1  ym 4. ERROR ANALYSIS
D
yn  ym There are two factors that affect the dimensional
accuracy, one is the process of acquiring the body point
x p1 D ( xn  xm )  xm (3) cloud and the other is the process of extracting the body
dimensions.
z p1 D ( zn  zm )  zm In this paper, the 3D body scanner is developed by our
team and it takes 12s to scan a whole body. In the process
of scanning, it is difficult to ensure that the body is static
and the body is moving slightly in fact. So this will defect

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the following measurement. When extracting the size of a
certain part, the body posture should be standard, such as
identifying the armpit points, if the angle between arms
and torso is too small to make the upper arms together
with torso, which results in armpit points lower.
In the process of extracting the body dimensions, the
body cross-section contour lines should be continuous and
smooth curves, the sub straight lines instead of smooth
curves make the dimension smaller.
5. CONCLUSION
The body point cloud is got by the 3D body scanner
developed by our team and pre-processed for
reconstructing the body triangular mesh model which is
used to extract the body dimensions. A total of 6 feature
points and 10 feature sizes are calculated. It takes 12s to
scanning the body, 3s to processing the point data and
constructing the body triangular mesh model and 1s to
extracting the body dimensions. All these time can be able
to satisfy extracting the body dimensions automatically.
Using this method to measuring a number of human
bodies, the error of results is limited in 1.9cm compared
with the results by manual measurement which shows that
this method is effective.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank the help of Ph.D. Yu-
Xiu Wang and she also thanks the colleagues from
Department of clothing design and engineering and key
laboratory for advanced textile composite of ministry of
education, Tianjin Polytechnic University.
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