Jan 11, 2018 | By Julia
We reported last year on the release of an impressive new 3D scanning solution from Polish company SMARTTECH, known as scan3Dmed. The machine is optimized for 3D scanning the human body, and it is capable of obtaining a full-body scan in 0.7 seconds. The potential for this powerful 3D scanning system is now starting to be realized, and one Japanese company has been particularly impressed with its performance. Untika Garments Technology Ltd specializes in the inspection and quality control of clothing items, optimizing safety and comfort for people’s bodies, and the scan3Dmed has been an invaluable aid in their work.
The field of medical research is broad, and Untika occupies what is perhaps one of its more niche areas. Unitika (ユニチカ株式会社) is a Japanese company based in Osaka, Japan. Primarily, the company produces various textiles, glass, plastics, and carbon fiber products. Analysis of textile products in terms of their physical impact on the body, hygiene levels, and chemical and bacteriological composition is, nevertheless, important for a variety of different applications. The reports that the company provides help clients reduce their production costs, as well as improving the quality of products. One client was involved with the manufacturing of a special compression sock, and tasked Untika with measuring its effect on the human body.
Legs can swell or compress during the course of a day, and improving the effectiveness of a compression sock required the detailed measuring of these changes. Normally, Untika would have used a water displacement technique to get a reading like this, and this is what they initially tried in order to measure the difference in volumes of a test subject’s legs at different times of the day. However, the differences in volume proved to be so small that this technique couldn’t offer the level of accuracy that the client required. This is when the Untika team made the decision to invest in one of SMARTTECH’s scan3Dmed 3D scanning solutions.
The scan3Dmed 3D scanning system that Untika acquired enabled them to gather the exact information that they needed about their test subjects’ leg swelling. The scan3Dmed is a metrologically certified device, which obtains precise data in color by projecting strips of light on to a measured object, placed on a rotary stage. This measurement method means that the entire process is not only fast and accurate but also safe for the human scanning subject. The 3D scanner’s structural light technology is ideal as it is calibrated to recognize parts of the human body, and it has proprietary software that can automate the scanning, which makes the whole process much more efficient and straightforward.
One of the main advantages of SMARTTECH’s system is how quickly it can generate a scan. A detailed 3D image of the whole body can be obtained in under a second, and in the case of Untika’s compression sock research this was particularly helpful as it minimized the effects that respiration could have on the measurement of the legs’ swelling. The team was able to get precise measurements of the calf radius of subjects wearing the compression socks at different times of the day, and this was then analyzed by the client in order to improve their product.
The scan3Dmed has a large volume of 800 x 600 x 350 mm, which allows it to perform a precise dimensioning of the entire body in one go, including the legs, arms, chest and face. This extra data that the system obtained, as well as the comprehensive 3D image it generated, made Untika’s project much more efficient. Future analysis could be carried out by their client just based on this one initial report, which meant that no further tests were required. Limiting the amount of necessary volunteer participation means that research projects can go ahead much faster as well as cut down on costs.
Posted in 3D Scanning
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