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Updated: Sep 8, 2025
Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study
Published on: February 2, 2017
Cross-sectional chest circumference and shape development in infants
Nima Seifnaraghi1, Serena de Gelidi2, Inéz Frerichs3
1Department of Natural Sciences, Middlesex University, London, UK. N.Seifnaraghi@mdx.ac.uk.
Insights
This study quantifies early-life thoracic development, finding chest circumference strongly correlates with body weight. While gender shows no circumference difference, chest shape varies with age and gender in young children.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric physiology
- Biomedical engineering
- Anthropometry
Background:
- Limited quantitative data exists for early-life thoracic development, specifically chest shape and circumference.
- Accurate chest models are crucial for applications like lung electrical impedance tomography (EIT).
Purpose of the Study:
- To establish quantitative references for thoracic cross-section development at the nipple line in early life.
- To investigate dependencies of chest shape and circumference on age, gender, and body weight.
- To inform realistic modeling and potential abnormality detection, aiding lung EIT applications.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of thoracic cross-section measurements at the nipple line level.
- Correlation analysis between chest circumference, body weight, age, and gender.
- Assessment of chest shape characteristics in relation to developmental factors.
Main Results:
- Chest circumference is highly correlated with body weight, described by a specific mathematical relation.
- No statistically significant gender-based differences were found in chest circumference.
- Thoracic shape exhibits age and gender dependencies, with boys tending towards a more rectangular shape than girls from approximately 1 year and 9 months.
Conclusions:
- Established mathematical relationships provide quantitative insights into early thoracic development.
- Findings contribute to developing more accurate chest models for clinical and research applications, including lung EIT.
- Identified age and gender-related shape variations highlight developmental trends in early childhood.
Objective:
This study investigates the development of the thoracic cross-section at the nipple line level during the early stages of life. Unlike the descriptive awareness regarding chest development course, there exist no quantitative references concerning shape, circumference and possible dependencies to age, gender or body weight. The proposed mathematical relations are expected to help create guidelines for more realistic modelling and potential detection of abnormalities. One potential application is lung electrical impedance tomography (EIT) monitoring where accurate chest models are crucial in both extracting reliable parameters for regional ventilation function and design of EIT belts. Despite their importance, such reference data is not readily available for the younger age range due to insufficient data amid the regulations of neonatal imaging.
Results:
Chest circumference shows the highest correlation to body weight following the relation [Formula: see text] where x is the body weight in grams and f(x) is the chest circumference in cm at the nipple line level. No statistically significant difference in chest circumference between genders was detected. However, the shape indicated signs of both age and gender dependencies with on average boys developing a more rectangular shape than girls from the age of 1 years and 9 months.
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