Smart Body Measurement Rehabilitation in Competitive Sports – Helping Athletes Return to Sport With 3D Body Scans

In the area of rehabilitation, the aim is to get athletes back to their maximum performance level and keep them there. The goal, therefore, is not a quick fix that rebuilds the athlete in the short term but may even impair them in the medium and long term, but rather a sustainable recovery of physical resilience and capacity.
3D body scans can help in this regard, as they offer two enormous advantages:

1. The big picture

The cause of injuries is not always found exactly where they occur. This implies that a therapy would be insufficient if it only addressed these areas. The advantage of using 3D body scans is that they not only show a specific body segment, but also provide a global view of the body and its structures. This helps to assess the athlete more holistically and to determine the core causes of injuries and asymmetries, even if there are entire cascades of them. For example, the technology allows to identify whether a painful curvature of the spine is present because the pelvis is tilted, and the pelvis is tilted because the leg axis is twisted. This comprehensive body analysis enables rehabilitation measures to be planned, structured and implemented in a much more targeted and rounded manner.

2. Keeping an eye on time

The second major advantage is the objective, uncomplicated documentation of the rehabilitation process. 3D body scans are gentle on the body, as they do not involve radiation or anything similar. They are also quick and easy to repeat, enabling assessments to be made at regular intervals during rehabilitation treatment and images to be compared with each other. In other words, it is easy to monitor the extent to which the athlete's body is changing as a result of therapy, training and muscle growth. On the positive side, this shows how quickly rehabilitation is taking effect and how the physique is developing. On the negative side, this makes it easier to see whether something is going off track in the rehabilitation process, and intervention as well as countermeasures are needed.

Ideally, one would also have 3D images of the athlete in a healthy or uninjured state that can be used for comparison.

3. Statics & dynamics

In any case, it is important to also include dynamic values when assessing athletes. Because it is precisely this combination of dynamic examinations and static whole-body analysis that provides a comprehensive overview of the physical state of health and performance.

3D body scan technology can be a central component in this, and VITRONIC’s 3D body scan platform BodyLoop is one of the innovations in the field. It provides the best possible data basis for diagnoses and individualized rehabilitation programs. And its precise, reproducible measurements are particularly relevant for continuous checks in the context of long therapy periods.