Estimation of Basic Anatomical Landmarks on 3D Foot Model using the Free-Form Deformation Method

In order to design industrial products fitting well to the human body, it is necessary to make full use of information of human anatomical landmarks. These landmarks however cannot be extracted automatically from point cloud data of human body surface obtained by a 3D scanner. And the coordinate system for the design model cannot be decided by the point cloud itself. Our previous report proposed an automatic detection method of the basic anatomical landmarks (basic landmarks) from the point cloud of a human foot [1]. In the method, two anatomical landmarks used for defining the coordinate system of 3D foot model, MT(metatarsale tibiale) and MF(metatarsale fiburale), are extracted using the multiple regression analysis. Then the coordinate system of the foot model is defined by using these obtained MT and MF. This method is effective in defining the coordinate system of 3D foot model. However the accuracy of estimating MT and MF is not so good. In this paper, we attempt to improve the accuracy by the Free Form Deformation method [2].