Avatar generator: a tool for prediction of three-dimensional humanoid avatars from manual anthropometric measurements.

Authors

Marco Alessandro Minetto, Marta Boccardo, Antonio Cappuccio, Marta Andrighetti, Chiara Busso, Stefano Basso, John A Shepherd, Steven B Heymsfield, Angelo Pietrobelli, Alberto Botter

Published in

Frontiers in nutrition. Volume 13. Pages 1906710. Epub Sep 15, 2026.

Abstract

Three-dimensional avatars provide an intuitive visual representation of body size and shape that can be useful for tailored clinical care, for example in the management of persons with obesity. This study aimed to evaluate the hypothesis that avatars predicted from manual anthropometric measurements (i.e., synthetic avatars) are comparable to avatars obtained through a digital anthropometric approach (i.e., ground-truth avatars).
A convenience sample of 83 adult participants was recruited: body weight and height were measured and anthropometric assessments were performed in each participant. The manual measurements included nine circumferences (neck, mid-upper arm, wrist, chest, natural waist, belly button waist, maximal hip, thigh, knee) and three lengths (shoulder width, upper limb length, inseam): a previously developed model was adopted to generate synthetic avatars from these twelve measurements (in combination with weight and height). The digital anthropometric assessment consisted of three-dimensional optical scanning. Synthetic and ground-truth avatars were digitally registered and reposed using Meshcapade.
Synthetic and ground-truth avatars had similar visual appearances and correlations between ground-truth and predicted measurements were all high (and statistically significant) with R²s ranging from 0.84 to 0.99 in males and from 0.77 to 0.99 in females. The lowest correlation was obtained for the thigh circumference in males and for the neck base circumference in females, while the highest correlation was obtained in both genders for the total body volume.
Synthetic avatars predicted from manual anthropometric measurements were comparable to ground-truth avatars. The use of synthetic avatars can be useful in the clinical practice to support patient education and engagement in weight loss nutritional programs. To promote the clinical use of digital anthropometry, the avatar generator model presented in this study was made available as a simple user interface-based calculator (https://www.avatargenerator.unito.it/).

PMID:
42813048
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 30 Sep 2026.

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