Background: Height is an important health assessment measure with many applications. In the medical practice and in research settings, height is typically measured with a stadiometer. Although lasers are commonly used by health professionals for measurement including facial imaging, corneal thickness, and limb length, it has not been utilized for measuring height. The purpose of this feasibility study was to examine the ease and accuracy of a laser device for measuring height in children and adults.

Findings: In immediate succession, participant height was measured in triplicate using a stadiometer followed by the laser device. Measurement error for the laser device was significantly higher than that for the stadiometer (0.35 and 0.20 cm respectively). However, the measurement techniques were highly correlated (r² = 0.998 and 0.990 for the younger [<12 y, n = 25] and older [≥12 y, n = 100] participants respectively), and the estimated reliability between measurement techniques was 0.999 (ICC; 95 % CI: 0.998,1.000) and 0.995 (ICC; 95 % CI: 0.993,0.997) for the younger and older groups respectively. The average differences between the two styles of measurement (e.g., stadiometer minus laser) were significantly different from zero: +0.93 and +0.45 cm for the younger and older groups respectively.

Conclusions: These data demonstrate that laser technology can be adapted to measure height in children and adults. Although refinement is needed, the laser device for measuring height merits further development.

The stadiometer is the gold standard human height measure, but recent studies have begun to question whether laser technology is a better tool to measure height. The purpose of this study was to investigate if the laser device has inter-rater reliability, how the laser-device measures supine height in comparison to standard methods, and if the laser device will be consistent in measuring human height shorter, as seen in previous studies. Two investigators measured a total of 80 adults independently. Measurements included knee height, arm span, demi span, supine height by laser, standing height by laser and standing height by stadiometer. There was a strong inter-rater reliability for the laser height measurement: excluding one outlier r=0.998. Supine height measures done with a laser were strongly correlated with arm span, but mean values were closest between supine height and knee height (171.3cm and 171.2cm). The laser measured standing height 0.5cm shorter, on average, than the stadiometer. It is concluded that the laser device is a reliable, validated tool to measure human height, standing or supine.