OCTOBER 27,1997 - Marin Independent Journal
by Dan Fost

Scan your Head

Go on. Take a seat. Lisa Federici wants to scan your head. Or your kids. Or a model. Or a valuable dinosaur bone. Federici has more than $500,000 worth of high-tech toys at Scansite, the San Anselmo business she co-owns with David Bassett, and she loves using them.

Scansite has already scanned the heads of Robin Williams and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi. "Any time you see somebody morphing, it was done on these machines," Federici says. Using expensive and hard to find Cyberware scanners, Scansite offers a service available in few other places. The head scanner looks like an old fashioned large-frame camera, black and boxy. The subject must sit very still, while the camera rotates around the head, using a laser to take a three dimensional picture that goes to the computer in seconds.

Once there, people can use modeling or computer-assisted design software to manipulate the wire-frame object. "This is changing our world as rapidly as the computer did when it first came out," Federici says. "There are so many applications.

Architects, shoe designers, machine makers - all use it in their CAD files. People in the medical industry use scans to make perfect fitting prosthetics, braces and crutches. "They scanned 30,000 pairs of (breasts) for the Wonderbra," Federici says. "I know the guy who did that. He had a great time."

When scientists want to study dinosaur bones, for instance, they can get a close-up view of a three dimensional scan - even make virtual cuts in the bone, without damaging the real thing. They can ship the scan around on the Internet.

They're doing it now, she says, and as evidence she holds out a bone from the forearm of Sue, the $8.4 million Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Federici, 37, has run several other businesses, including a moving company, but this is her first high tech venture. Bassett, 48, is an architect by training. Scansite employs several people in all.