3D laser maths models of women's bodies produced

Top Japanese mathematical modelling boffins have used the latest in 3D computing to achieve a much better grasp of women's bodies.

Kensuke Nakamura of Kyoto Institute of Technology and Takao Kurokawa of Osaka University say that a truly accurate 3D mathematical picture of the female form has thus far been lacking. The duo say this means that "close-fitting products" for ladies are needlessly wrinklesome, intrusive and/or prone to undesirable bagging.

They set about rectifying this in true scientific fashion. According to their publishers' statement, the boffins "took a close look at the bodies of 560 Japanese women... using laser metrology to map 'control points' at specific sites on the women's trunks... to build up a database of body shapes".

Rather than publish their trove of 3D laser-scanned imagery in the usual NSFW channels, the two profs used "principal component analysis and cluster analysis to classify trunk characteristics into five different types. Each depends on slimness or otherwise, breast size and angle, neck type, and shoulder slope".

Apparently it would be possible to develop more than five generic shapes, but this would drive up the cost of smalls etc. But the five accurately-modelled templates will apparently lead to "sexier lingerie" and improvements to other close-fitting items such as "everyday clothes ... safety garments [or] practical functional clothes used for body adjustment". At a wild guess that last one might be Bridget Jones-style body-moulding big knickers.

All this is optimised very much for the Japanese physique, of course.

According to pile-em-high sell-em-cheap academic publisher Inderscience, the two men actually said:

"We expect... the results will be reflected in clothes design instead of the seat-of-the-pants approach of designers."

No doubt winking and nudging each other as they did so.

Their paper Analysis and classification of three-dimensional trunk shape of women by using the human body shape model is published in the International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology. ®