“Lingerie mathematics”
Japanese researchers have designed a computerized 3-D model to extract a woman's body shape and linked it to classification of female trunk shapes to help the designers create more sensuous, comfortable, and better fitting designs product ranges. They believe that the conventional body measurements, photographic images, and silhouette fail to provide an accurate and complete three-dimensional data. With this new three dimensional model designers can get their products tailored and designed more closer to majority of body shapes. The study might also enclose research for body image and disorder as one of it's novel dimensions.
Kensuke Nakamura of Kyoto Institute of Technology and Takao Kurokawa of Osaka University said that identifying the body shape components is the most critical and complex procedure involved in designing close-fitting products like underwear or safety garments.
To build up a database of body shapes, the researchers studied and observed about 560 Japanese women, aged from 19 to 63, by using laser metrology to map "control points" at specific parts on the women's trunk, and fitted the data to a 3-D trunk model. The team later incorporated statistical analysis to the data employing principal component analysis and cluster analysis to classify trunk characteristics into five different body shapes and types that represented majority of trunk shape of Japanese women. Each of the type depends on slimness or otherwise, breast size and angle, neck type, and shoulder slope.
The researchers claim that their analysis will be helpful in producing clothes that fit better for majority of trunk sizes and shapes. It may also prove instrumental in improving practical functional clothes used for body adjustment and posture improvement
