A Survey on segmentation and Modeling of Full Human Body shape from 3-D Scan Data

The recent advances in full human body (HB) imaging technology illustrated by the 3-D human body scanner (HBS), a device delivering full HB shape data, opened up large perspectives for the deployment of this technology in various fields such as the clothing industry, anthropology, and entertainment. However, these advances also brought challenges on how to process and interpret the data delivered by the HBS in order to bridge the gap between this technology and potential applications. This paper presents a literature survey of research work on HBS data segmentation and modeling aiming at overcoming these challenges, and discusses and evaluates different approaches with respect to several requirement The last decade has witnessed the emergence of new 3-D imaging devices capable of capturing the entire shape as well as the appearance of the human body (HB). A human body scanner (HBS) is a device that generates a 3-D “point cloud” from the subject’s frame, i.e., a constellation of 100 000–200 000 points generated by the body’s surface. These data are saved into a simple digital format and can easily be converted to the most common computer-aided design formats. This development opens up new perspectives for HBSs in diverse fields. In anthropometric surveys that require collecting more than 100 body measurements from a large population (thousands of individuals), manual measurement is timeconsuming, errorprone, and very costly. HBS technology, in contrast, drastically reduces the cost and duration of the surveys, permits rapid capture of the body shape (seconds versus minutes for a measurement by hand), and offers more consistent measurements. In addition, HBS offers the reusability of data because the scan data actually replace the scanned subject. Once extracted, the scan data can be used again and again to gather additional information. On the contrary, a subject measured using traditional means is not guaranteed to be available for future reference. HBS also opens up new applications in medicine and health. Gyms can use HBS data to track the effects of diet and exercise regimens. Human shape databases will be useful for screening and survey tasks such as monitoring public health problems (e.g., obesity) and assessing child growth. HBS would be of significant interest particularly when the use of other standard medical tools like X-rays is precluded for safety reasons. In fact, the relative low-cost and noninvasive nature of HBS make it a promising potential complement to current medical imaging