Validation Study of a Laser as a New Tool For Height Measurement

Title: Validation study of a laser as a new tool for height measurement. Background: Height is an essential measure for the evaluation of an adult’s health, and especially important for the measure of children’s health. Lasers have been popularly used in many areas such as construction, engineering, military, and recently for measuring the height of equestrians. Lasers are depended on for their accuracy, reliability, and ease of use. It can be reasoned then that lasers should be a reliable accurate and easy way of measuring height. Currently, stadiometers are the standard way of measuring height. Methods: For the study a laser tool was created to measure the volunteers’ heights. Volunteers were recruited from a total of four various public sites in different cities. Participants were categorized into three groups, children (ages 2-12), adolescents (13-18), and adults (19+). A total of 128 participants were measured. Heights were taken three individual times with the stadiometer and an average was calculated. Height was then measured with the laser three individual times and an average for that was calculated. The two averages were compared to see how the laser heights measured against the standard of the stadiometer. Results: Results showed a strong positive correlation between measurements of the stadiometer and the laser (r=0.999). An average difference of 0.5cm was found between the stadiometer averages and laser averages. Triplicate measures showed that the first stadiometer measurements differed significantly compared to the second and third measurement, conversely the third laser measurements differed significantly compared to the first two. Conclusions: These data demonstrate that laser technology can be adapted to measure height in children and adults. Utilizing laser technology for height assessment has the potential to improve accuracy and ease of measurement. A laser device for measuring height merits further development.