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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Airport body scanning technology has been adapted to help shoppers quickly find better fitting clothes. The device is based on technology initially designed to protect air travelers.
The wide deployment of millimeter wave full-body scanners at airports around the U.S. caused a kerfuffle largely because they generate grainy photos of travelers' naked bodies. Will a makeover of the technology that promises to help put clothes on your body get a different reception?
If preliminary results from a beta test of the technology are a guide, the answer is yes.
"The feedback has been phenomenal from customers as to the helpfulness of the service to them," Elizabeth Thomas, a marketing executive with Unique Solutions Limited, told me today.
The company licensed the body-scanning technology from Batelle, a research organization that manages the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where the technology was first developed, and deployed the first "mybestfit" kiosk at the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania.
The millimeter wave technology uses radio waves to penetrate clothing and bounce signals off the body that get transferred to a computer where the data generates useful information.
At airports, the data is used to make a somewhat naked-body image that helps security personnel identify objects such as ceramic knives and other non-metallic weapons. At the mall, "there's no image involved whatsoever," Thomas said.
Rather, a computer software program uses the signals to generate measurement data from all over your body: arm and leg length, waist and hip size, weight, etc., and then matches that data up with fitting fashions available at the mall.
The shopping potential of the technology was demonstrated to reporters at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in 2007. The deployment at the Pennsylvania mall is the beginning of what Unique Solutions Limited hopes will be a trend that allows us all to be a bit more smartly dressed for stress.
More on body scanners:
- Scanning for security – and the perfect jeans
- Are airport X-ray scanners harmful
- Leaked U.S. Marshal body scan images revealed
- Airport body scanners reveal all
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
Leave a Comment:
Irradiating travelers is not enough so now they want to irradiate you at the mall...voluntarily?? No Thank You, I prefer to get my radiation straight from the sun, the doctor and dentist. I have no need to get irradiated just to get clothes that fit, a measuring tape does just as well and does not leave me with an after-glow!
You should start shopping for a nice deep cave to live in. Anywhere else, you're bathed in radio waves pretty much all the time.
Considering that I was a radiation worker in the Navy I would bet that I understand that a whole lot better than you do actually. In caves you also have to worry about radon gas and the residual radiation in the rock itself, LOL. I am not an extremist on this subject, but I am not going to step into one of those scanners just to have my measurements taken. As you point out, we are subjected to enough different radiation sources all the time, no need to intentionally radiate myself further.
Thank you very much! Here is my 2 cents, I just printed Coupons for free. You can print coupons before you shop by searching "Printapon" online