This project will enable Body Aspect to draw on scientific expertise to improve the company's breast volume measurement software. Body Aspect's service uses 3D body surface scanning technology, in conjunction with the company's proprietary software, to provide a Breast Assessment Service to the NHS in the East Midlands. NHS elective breast surgery is available to women when their breasts are disproportionately large, or where there is significant asymmetry or absence of breast tissue. However, methods for estimating breast size are unreliable owing to the non-standardisation of bra-sizing/fitting and the inaccuracy of estimation by eye. Body Aspect worked with NHS commissioners and clinicians in the East Midlands to introduce a new pathway that uses 3D body scanning combined with Body Aspect's specialist software to more accurately assess breast volume and breast-to-torso ratio. The project will address existing deficiencies relating to the design and testing of the breast volume measurement software. The previous testing process was cumbersome with several sources of inaccuracy. Body Aspect will collaborate with the scientific partners to design test models that will form the basis of a new testing protocol. Newton Gateway will help Body Aspect to improve the accuracy of their breast volume measurement software through enhancements to the modeling techniques.

This project will create a virtual reality tool for investigating how to minimise the spread of Covid19 and other diseases in public places. We will develop a virtual reality system that tracks the spread of the virus as an infected user moves through a particular environment. The system will enable the layout of the environment to be altered and rules for customer behaviour to be set. We will focus on the specific activity of supermarket shopping, but the software will be designed so that it can be adapted to other relevant situations such as public transport, hospital settings and care homes. Previous studies have attempted to model how a virus spreads; for example, a team at Aalto University modelled how aerosol particles can spread and dilute when an infected person coughs. Our approach will complement such studies by providing a practical tool to explore the effect of modifications to environmental layout and customer behaviour on transmission of the virus. The system will allow customisation of store layout such as aisle spacing, and customer behaviour such as social distancing guidance. Virtual Reality enables us to transport a user, in this case a shopper, into a particular environment in a way that is safe, controllable and more convenient than conducting actual research in store. We will invite supermarket representatives and public health experts to be involved defining user requirements at the start of the project. A user group will be recruited to assist with testing. Each user will be given a shopping list and will simulate the shopping experience in several different store layouts using a first-person perspective. The store will be populated with other (biometrically accurate) avatars with pre-programmed paths around the store. Each shopping experience will be replayed in a 3rd person perspective with 'collisions' highlighted where people break the social distancing rule. The Covid19 pandemic has increased pressure on supermarkets to acknowledge their responsibility to society. Whereas normally store layouts are designed to maximise profit, usually by making a customer's route as circuitous as possible, this technology will enable the effect on disease spread to be assessed. Beyond this project, the system will be adapted for other retail stores, and other public environments, such as public transport. Ultimately it will enable Public Health England to assess, and communicate visually, the impacts of social distancing in public places which will improve public awareness and inform national guidelines. An extension is requested for the purpose of additional testing and analysis, and for new user research with sector participants. The new supermarket simulation tool will be used to: examine shopping habits at the supermarket and how these have been affected by COVID-19 and related restrictions; examine the effectiveness of some of the current changes supermarkets have made to ensure the safety of shoppers; to explore the use of alternative supermarket layouts and customer guidance which may improve the overall safety of customers and enhance the customer experience.

The project will investigate the feasibility of transforming Body Aspect's 3D body scanning technology into a multisensory virtual reality (VR) application for obesity and eating disorders. The project will investigate the user requirements for the application and clarify the technical challenges. Eating disorders and obesity are both disturbances associated with eating behaviour, weight, and body image, and a growing body of research supports the consideration of 3D body imaging and VR for these issues. Body Aspect has conducted its own studies on gym members to assess how 3D image assessment can support weight management, and has presented to several eating disorders teams, receiving positive feedback. A core aspect of this project is to explore the use of 3D image capture for creating personalised full body avatars. Virtual humans in VR applications tend to be abstract or approximate representations of real people. However, for the proposed applications there is an intuitive case for considering the use of virtual humans that are realistic in body size and shape. Workshops will be conducted with practitioners and 'experts by experience' from both fields to examine different components of the proposed applications and, in parallel, core technical challenges will be addressed. The project team includes collaborators from the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University. The project could lead to a new tool that will increase the prospect of users achieving a healthy weight and speed up recovery. There are potential financial benefits to the NHS and the wider benefits will be a reduction in obesity and improved outcomes for patients with eating disorders. The technology will have relevance to body image disorders, in general, and could have value in creative industries such as fashion design.

The project will provide essential software development to enable the implementation of a 3D image assessment tool in gyms and healthcare environments. The tool will enable users to create a 3D image of their target body, and to be able to monitor progress towards this target by having regular 3D body scans. Previous focus groups and pilots of a prototype software application have indicated a demand for this technology within two groups: gym users and NHS weight management programmes. But feedback from a pilot survey has indicated several critical limitations of the prototype technology. The project incorporates three strands of development that are needed to convert an existing basic prototype into a useful product: Development of new functionality for an existing prototype of the company's morphological editor software, which enables a user to create a realistic target body in 3D; Development of a 3D Image Portal to enable users to view their 3D images on their personal devices; and the collection of 3D data of overweight and obese subjects, to facilitate the creation of appropriate base models and to inform the development of new algorithms for weight loss prediction.

The project aims to investigate the market for Body Aspect’s 3D body scanning technology within the field of eating disorders. It is estimated that Eating disorders affect over 1.6 million people in the UK. Although the underlying causes can be complex, the classifications for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa both incorporate the idea of self-image that is unduly influenced by body weight or shape. Existing methods of assessing body image issues include: patients sketching their perceived image on paper; manipulation of 2D photographs; and visual inspection of their body in a mirror. Our innovative software, which draws on an existing dataset of over two thousand body scans, enables a user to create realistic models of perceived and ideal images. Our unique 3D file representation means that the constructed 3D images can be easily compared with actual 3D body scans, facilitating the visualisation and quantification of body image distortion and body image dissatisfaction. During this project clinicians at three specialist clinics will be able to pilot the use of Body Aspect’s prototype 3D body scanning technology to assess how it might be might be used to identify, quantify and monitor body image issues. For the first time, patients will be able to create realistic 3D images of their perceived body and their ideal body and compare these against reality, as produced by a 3D body scan. We will consult clinicians, patients, and the families of patients who are affected by eating disorders, and we will organise focus groups to explore how the technology might be incorporated into a treatment plan. The results of our project will clarify the potential of our technology to provide significant healthcare and economic impact. It will enable us to formulate a concept regarding the exact nature of its role in treatment, hopefully leading to better early detection of eating disorders and a better method of classifying and monitoring body image issues.