How Styku health scanning works
How Styku’s health and wellness scanning tool came from gaming hardware
How Styku’s scanning hardware works is quite remarkable. It offers safe, affordable, portable, and highly accurate surface scanning. What’s more remarkable though is where it came from. It’s a case of a product that failed in its original market, only to be successful in another.
The infrared camera within the Styku’s scanning tower began life as Microsoft Kinect V2 hardware. Microsoft spent years developing an accurate, safe, compact, and affordable depth sensing and motion tracking system to use with XBox gaming systems. Its original intention was to track body movements so games could be played with physical gestures only. Its first generation sold 8 million units in its first 60 days on sale. The second generation Kinect V2 was bundled with XBox One units. Ultimately the novelty of gesture-based gaming wore off and the Kinect was phased out. While it didn’t catch on with gamers, the hardware was extraordinarily good consumer-focused tech, as you’d expect from a giant like Microsoft. It just didn’t deliver an experience that gamers wanted.
Styku saw its potential and began to develop it for their wellness systems. They adapted it to capture 600 infra-red images per scan that get processed into a full 3D model. Completed scans are then processed by Styku’s Phoenix algorithm (link to other page on Styku algorithm) that calculates body composition, limb diameters, and volume data.
INFRARED LIGHT
Use of infrared light is one of the Styku scanner’s best features. It’s both very accurate and completely harmless. Remember, this was made as a gaming peripheral targeted at children and families. The infrared light that comes from a Styku scanner is the most benign wellness scanner on the market.
DEXA scanners use radiation which adds to the bulk, expense, and tighter regulations around the use of those machines. Bioelectrical impedence analysis (BIA) systems pass electricity through the body to make their assessments. There’s no evidence that BIA systems are harmless in any way, but Styku’s system produces more accurate results without any contact with your body.
THE REST OF THE SYSTEM
The other part of Styku’s scanning hardware is the rotating platform. What you see is what you get with the platform; it shows you where to put your feet and then rotates slowly 360° while the scanner does its work. There’s a weight scale inside the platform and a motor to rotate it.
It’s a simple system that produces amazing results.
ALL ABOUT THAT ALGORITHM
Styku’s hardware system gives the accurate measurement needed for the Phoenix algorithm to work its magic. Styku developed its Phoenix algorithm with the help of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to calculate DEXA scan-equivalent body composition results based the physical measurements taken by the scanner.
For those unfamiliar with DEXA scans, they’re radiation-based body composition tests. It’s widely regarded as the industry standard for accurate body composition. Styku’s system gives remarkably close results in less time, using no radiation, and for much less money.
All from a system that began as gaming hardware!
Contact us if you’d like to enquire about scanning services.
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