[HN Gopher] Breakthrough in 3D scanning means results are 4500% ...
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       Breakthrough in 3D scanning means results are 4500% more accurate
        
       Author : rbanffy
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2021-06-30 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.lboro.ac.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.lboro.ac.uk)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | xbar wrote:
       | A margin of error of 13.8cm in current 3D scans of human bodies?
       | I think their baseline is bogusly large.
        
         | yorwba wrote:
         | They're using a commercial scanner:
         | https://www.sizestream.com/technology
         | 
         | The margin of error is less surprising if you consider that
         | they're interested in the precision of measurements like
         | _hinged upper bust circumference_ , not the position of raw
         | points in a point cloud. According to the paper "Erroneous
         | measurements occur because of the 3 D Body Scanner's incorrect
         | placement of anthropometric landmarks or the physical
         | positioning of body parts which increase measurement paths
         | against the algorithms. The 3 D Body Scanner's incorrect
         | landmark and measurement placement, in this study, causes
         | measurements with a range of up to 32.9 cm (M=14.6 cm; SD=12.67
         | cm)."
         | 
         | I.e. if the scanner confuses your arm for your leg, that's
         | going to throw off the measurements a lot.
         | 
         | It seems like SizeStream could easily improve their product by
         | applying some basic filtering to remove outliers.
        
           | tapland wrote:
           | Oh yeah. And a grainy surface would give a higher surface
           | area which if you used that as a measurement for creating
           | clothes would be bad, but less bad with improved surface
           | measurements.
        
         | changoplatanero wrote:
         | Yes that seems too big to be true
        
       | savant_penguin wrote:
       | That looks like basic filtering by z score
       | 
       | Someone should also try median filtering, would that be
       | considered another breakthrough?
       | 
       | Edit: just read the code, they also filter by the distance to the
       | median.
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | > average margin of error for current 3D scanning machines is
       | around 13.8cm
       | 
       | Sorry _whaaat_?? No 3D scanner I 've ever used has a margin of
       | error of 13cm!! Typically for person-sized objects margins of
       | error can be expected to be 1mm typically.
        
       | riotnrrd wrote:
       | Here's the code:
       | https://github.com/UoMResearchIT/Gryphon/blob/main/gryphon.p...
       | 
       | Based on a brief read, it looks like the "breakthrough" is
       | discarding the two measurements in a point group that are the
       | furthest outliers from the mean. That can't be it, can it?
       | Because that's an afternoon's work for an intern, not a
       | breakthrough.
        
         | madengr wrote:
         | More accuracy may be better, but I'd like to see a quick method
         | of extracting analytic geometry from a 3D scan.
         | 
         | We have laser scanners and Faro arms at work, and in the end
         | it's a person manually entering the geometry into Solidworks as
         | the point cloud is useless.
        
         | TeeMassive wrote:
         | If it was that stimple, then why it was not implemented and/or
         | widely used before?
        
           | cma wrote:
           | Almost every variation on strategies like that has been used
           | with depth data. Median filters are more popular.
        
           | jjoonathan wrote:
           | It was, but the authors have an incentive to pretend it's
           | novel, the press has an incentive to pretend it's novel, and
           | the patent office has an incentive to pretend it's novel.
        
         | FridayoLeary wrote:
         | The fact that the article mentioned 4500% three times, twice in
         | the title alone, kind of warned me to take their news with a
         | pinch of salt.
        
         | oezi wrote:
         | Too late for you to hold up the train of progress, a patent was
         | already filed. /s
        
           | TeMPOraL wrote:
           | _You_ being the operative word, as in 21st century, patents
           | are the _definition_ of holding up progress.
        
             | verdverm wrote:
             | That can be true, and so is the idea that if you could not
             | reap the rewards of your inventions, you wouldn't invest
             | the effort because it could only be a cost sink. It's more
             | nuanced and contextual than that. That said, the patent /
             | trademark (probably any similar system) has up and down
             | sides
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | That's why I said "in the 21st century". As far as I
               | studied this, patents are a really solid idea _in theory_
               | , and perhaps they even worked as advertised at some
               | point in the past. But the way they work today, they're
               | thoroughly gamed - patent owners get the benefits, the
               | society doesn't get its promised returns. But I agree,
               | it's a pretty nuanced topic.
        
               | verdverm wrote:
               | The idea of having time and protection to recoup your
               | investment still applies today. Being "in the 21st
               | century" doesn't remove this trade-off nor imply that
               | progress is held up because of patents. It could be that
               | progress suffers more without patents. Humanity and
               | society works better with incentives and freedom of
               | preferences
        
         | sacred_numbers wrote:
         | Something can be remarkably simple and still a breakthrough at
         | the same time. Handwashing, for example, is one of the greatest
         | medical breakthroughs of all time despite its simplicity.
        
           | Scene_Cast2 wrote:
           | On the data side, a simple but effective algorithm is
           | "lightweight coresets". A couple of line of NumPy, but strong
           | guarantees and nice properties.
        
             | 1123581321 wrote:
             | Lightweight corsets (shapewear using hose-like material)
             | were also a simple, effective breakthrough.
        
               | ethbr0 wrote:
               | It made Spanx into a ~$750M company.
        
           | sen wrote:
           | Yes but telling people who already know how to wash their
           | hands that they should wash them for "more than 1 second and
           | less than 1 hour" isn't novel, which is effectively what
           | they're trying to sell here.
           | 
           | There's nothing in this "breakthrough" that isn't already
           | being done anyway, and the comparison stats are completely
           | made up. 13.8cm resolution in current scanners? Have they
           | even used a 3D scanner made after the millennium turned?
        
       | binbag wrote:
       | 4500%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
       | 
       | That's 45,000,000 ppm!!!!!
        
         | s_gourichon wrote:
         | Percentage are broken in many cases because they are ambiguous,
         | and often difficult to compose. +50% then -50% is not identity
         | but ratio 3/4.
         | 
         | A plain explicit ratio is sometimes better. Ratio in decibel,
         | or "doubling number" can sometimes be valuable alternative,
         | could be used more often.
         | 
         | +1 doubling -1 doubling is identity. Same for decibels.
        
         | OJFord wrote:
         | In case it's missing, I think parent's tongue is firmly in
         | their cheek - point is things like '4500%' are often
         | manipulatively rendered that way to sound massive, vs. '45x'
         | for example, which means the same, is just as massive, but
         | perhaps doesn't sound _as_ crazy?
        
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