The True Height of the Waist: Explorations of automated body scanner waist definitions of the TC2 scanner

The waist is considered as an important measurement point for clothing and represents part of a control section from which lower body garments hang and garments are often required to fit. However, unlike many measurement sites on the body the waist has no single landmark from which to reference it for a population. The non-contact nature of body scanning further complicates this, though automated measurement systems connected to body scanning have developed methods to determine the waist relative to surface geometry. Whilst body scanning provides an opportunity to analyse large volumes of data, there is limited knowledge of how differences in waist definitions using automated systems of measurement compare to waist placement with reference to accepted upper and lower limits. This work employed content analysis methods to understand existing clothing waist definitions and developed different waist definitions within automated measurement software of a TC2 scanner. Measurement extraction using this explorative set of definitions was undertaken on a sample of 106 females whose upper and lower waist limits had been determined through measurement. The data was then analysed to establish how the definitions compared to the waist height determined as the midpoint between the upper (lowest palpable rib) and lower (highest point of the right iliac crest) limits. It was possible to establish that proportional relationships between lengths that could help in defining waist placement and provide checks in automated extraction. As a result of this study a number of suitable waist definitions are proposed for use in the automated measurement software of body scanning technology.