The study aims to compare waist, hip, upper arm, and midthigh circumference measurements acquired by a free downloadable app (MeThreeSixty; Size Stream, Cary, North Carolina) and a conventional 20-camera 3D system (SS20; Size Stream) with those measured with a flexible tape at the same anatomic sites.
Three-dimensional (3D) imaging systems are increasingly being used in health care settings for quantifying body size and shape. The potential exists to provide similar phenotyping capabilities outside of professional settings using smartphone applications (apps). These proof-of-concept observations combined with ubiquitous smartphone availability create the possibility of phenotyping adult body size and shape, with important clinical and research implications, on a global scale.
Key takeaway
An independent Pennington Biomedical Research Center study found that Size Stream’s free MeThreeSixty app performed on par with the professional-grade SS20 20-camera scanner, with R² values of 0.72–0.93 vs. 0.78–0.95 across six anatomical circumference sites validated against expert tape measurements. Both systems produce standard .obj files compatible with the same device-agnostic analytical pipeline, meaning smartphone-derived data can feed directly into clinical and research-grade body composition workflows. Combined with Size Stream’s ongoing work on real-time scan quality, this study makes the case that reliable, large-scale anthropometric data collection, across populations and geographies, without clinic visits or specialized equipment, is no longer a future prospect.