Valuation of body surface measurements: Accuracy rating of anatomical landmarks

The detection of anatomical landmarks on the body surface measured by raste rstereography is based on the analysis of surface curvatures. Landmarks suc h as the vertebra prominens or the lumbar dimples are localised at points o f maximum convex or concave curvature. It is shown that the accuracy (repro ducibility) of landmark localisation correlates with the magnitude of local curvature. This finding makes it possible to estimate the accuracy of a la ndmark a priori from a single record, instead of determining the statistica l scatter from a large number of records taken in the same posture.