Online retail embraces body scanners Airport security scanners, the bane of travellers and a bugbear of libertarians, may be the consumer's best friend after all. Rival entrepreneurs have adapted the technology along with the secrets of Microsoft's Xbox to help online shoppers find clothes that will fit by digitising their bodies. While internet shopping for everything from food to furniture has become commonplace, few dare to buy clothes online because they do not want to purchase, and risk having to return, an item they have not tried on. Now a wave of new businesses are competing to overcome that barrier by matching body scans to clothes measurements online. They argue that the technology will revolutionise fashion retail in the same way that Amazon has transformed the business of book selling. Most US clothes shopping - 89 per cent according to Forrester Research - still happens in bricks-and-mortar stores because shoppers are not confident they can find the right size and fit from onscreen product specifications and 2D images. In recent years airport scanners have been best known for controversy they have sparked over the right to privacy. Unique Solutions is using the millimetre wave technology in some airport body scanners - invented by a government laboratory - to offer shoppers free scans in 70 US malls, where shoppers get buying recommendations based on their measurements. Bodymetrics of the UK and Styku from Los Angeles have both developed scanners based on the infrared motion sensors in Microsoft's Kinect device, which is normally used by arm-waving Xbox owners to play action games. Bodymetrics last month opened a scanner in a US Bloomingdale's store, and both companies are exploring ways to use the technology to enable scanning and virtual fittings at home with a personal avatar. Upcload, based in Berlin, already offers home scans using a webcam and image processing technology that was first used to detect tiny defects in computer chips. Jamal Motlagh, founder of Acustom, which offers a white light scanner also used by plastic surgeons, said: "All aspects of our life are digitised. Everything about you is online. One of the last hold outs is the digitisation of your body measurements. Sceptics say that entrepreneurs are overhyping the possibilities, arguing that technology cannot replace the certainty of being able to touch and try on an outfit. Battelle, a group that commercialises government inventions, has given Unique Solutions a licence to the scanning technology used in some airport body scanners, but not those that have sparked health concerns over their use of X-ray radiation. Tanya Shaw, Unique's chief executive, say that its scanner's waves are similar to those emitted by a mobile phone but 1,000 times weaker. To allay privacy concerns, she stresses that while the scanners collect a string of data points they are never turned into a visible image of a person. Ed Gribbin, who uses several devices as president of apparel consultancy Alvanon, said it was more valuable to use body scanning to help manufacturers improve the fit of their clothes than to tell consumers their size. There will be a relatively small percentage of people that will think it's cool. But there will be a large percentage of people that don't have time for that. Americans spent $25bn on clothes and accessories online in the 12 months to June out of total ecommerce spending of $173bn, according to ComScore.