Open Access

Miriam Senne, Elena Brake, Felix Kunzelmann, Ann-Malin Schmidt, Christoph Baur, Katerina Rose, Yordan Kyosev

• Capturing accurate body dimensions is crucial for the apparel industry, particularly in the creation of customized garments and ensuring an optimal fit. The current standard methods include using measuring tapes on key body areas or employing 3D scanners. Both techniques require the individual to wear tightly fitted clothing or no clothing at all to ensure accurate measurements. These inconveniences may be alleviated with so-called Microwave Imaging (MI), a lesser known imaging technology typically employed in security scanning. MI offers an alternative approach as it is capable of capturing body dimensions accurately and rapidly even under clothing. In this inital work, MI is thoroughly investigated and compared both visually and quantitatively to established measurement techniques. For a quantitative assessment, approximate methods for determining human body dimensions based on MI are presented and compared to aforementioned conventional measurements methods. All scanning procedures were conducted on a static mannequin, being tested in two distinct configurations: unclothed and wearing a jacket. The experimental setup is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of capturing body dimensions in general, and in particular through clothing, with a specific focus on exploring the potential applications of MI data in the context of body measurement. To this end, MI demonstrates to be a fast, comfortable and feasible method for measuring body circumferences, rendering it a viable option for use in the clothing industry. The technology shows promise, especially in its ability to capture body dimensions even through thick clothing.