Nowadays, 3D scanning technologies are applied to different parts of the human body and systems are commercially available for the measurement of practically any surface area of the human body. Figure 1 shows some examples of results achieved by applying 3D surface scanning.

The fields of possible applications of 3D scanning technologies are also of various nature. Some examples of domains where the human body digitization is already successfully exploited are, as shown in Figure 2, animation, computer games, art and sculpture, ergonomics, medicine and forensic, cosmetics and dermatology, anthropology, biometry and security, fitness and sport, fashion and beauty, communications.

2. ACTUAL STATE OF TECHNOLOGY

Technologies used commercially for the digital measurement of the human body can be divided into five different groups: (a) laser scanning, (b) projection of white light patterns, (c) combination modeling and image processing, (d) digital manual measurement, (e) technologies based on other active sensors. Table 1 and the Figure 3 show the distribution of all the existing companies developing systems for the measurement of the human body. These are divided into three major groups: systems based on laser scanning, systems employing white light projection and the rest.

The systems and products for human body measurement are developed and produced in the three regions North America, Europe and Asia. The majority of white light projection based systems are developed in Europe: mainly in Germany and UK. Whereas, laser scanning systems are developed and produced in north America and Asia.

The next sections will give a short description and some examples of the different technologies.