Segmenting a human body point cloud into limbs I have a human body point cloud taken through a Kinect (v1). Now, I want to segment the point cloud into different parts, namely hands, lower arms, upper arms, torso, upper legs, lower legs, feet and head. 

Here's the method I'm currently using:


I get the approximate skeleton from the point cloud using OpenNI
I take those points from the point cloud that are at a distance d from the line that is the bone (obtained from OpenNI). This distance d is currently set differently for different parts, based on observations only.


The problem with the above method is that it's not very robust. The parameter d can be different for people with different body types and also this is prone to errors since at the joints, the points within the circle of radius d will lie in both the parts.

Is there a better way of segmenting the point cloud?



Edit: This is what I get from OpenNI



The blue portion is the lower arms segmented using the above algorithm.
Suggestion: for each point $P$ in the point cloud, find which bone it is nearest to, and associate it with that bone.  In other words, find which point $Q$ on the skeleton is closest to $P$, and associate $P$ with $Q$.  Now associate $Q$ with a particular part of the skeleton (e.g., arm, leg, etc.); that will let you associate $P$ with a particular part of body (e.g., arm, leg, etc.).  Do this for each point in the point cloud.

Try that -- it's a very simple approach, and it might just work.