MedTech · Computer Vision · Mobile
Precise foot measurement with a smartphone.
How a technically demanding measurement requirement became a mobile computer vision application.
- Industry
- MedTech / Healthcare
- Duration
- approx. 4 months
- Project size
- €50K+
- Project type
- Specialized technical solution
The task
A measurement that does not start with a ruler.
A large German provider in the health and medical supplies sector needed a mobile application that measures the foot using a smartphone camera.
The actual task was to derive precise geometric information about the foot from camera images. That meant accounting for capture conditions, a reference object, image processing and the accuracy the use case demanded.
How do you derive a reliable measurement from a smartphone image?
The challenge
The image is not the result.
A smartphone camera delivers image data and nothing more. Turning that into usable geometric information meant connecting several technical problems into one chain.
- Capturing suitable image data
- Accounting for capture conditions
- Using a reference object
- Detecting the relevant image regions
- Image processing
- Deriving geometric information
- Calculating the relevant measurements
- Feeding the results back into the application
The difficulty was not the camera. It was producing a reliable measurement from its data.
Technical feasibility
Before the application was built, the approach had to work.
With a requirement like this, a theoretical architecture cannot tell you whether the intended approach is accurate enough in practice. The central technical questions had to be examined hands-on first.
Can the required information be derived from the camera data? Can the reference object be detected reliably? What accuracy is achievable under real conditions? And can the approach be turned into a mobile application people will actually use?
The most critical technical assumption was validated first.
Development
From a technical core to a product.
Once the approach was validated, the application was built out in full. The computer vision component was never treated in isolation — it had to become part of a working overall system.
- 01Smartphone
- 02Camera
- 03Image data
- 04Computer vision
- 05Geometric evaluation
- 06Measurement result
- 07Mobile application / backend
Computer vision was not the product. It was one central building block of the solution.
From idea to production
One technical partner for the entire project.
From investigating the approach through building the mobile application to backend and infrastructure, the relevant technical areas were treated as one system.
- Technical concept
- Proof of concept
- Computer vision
- Mobile application
- Backend & API
- Cloud & CI/CD
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Your project
Do you have a technical requirement with no obvious solution?
Then it does not have to be clear from the start what the finished software looks like. The first question is simply: what has to be achieved technically?