Contact points of convex bodies

LetB be a convex body in ? ⁿ and let ? be an ellipsoid of minimal volume containingB. By contact points ofB we mean the points of the intersection between the boundaries ofB and ?. By a result of P. Gruber, a generic convex body in ? ⁿ has (n+3)·n/2 contact points. We prove that for every ?>0 and for every convex bodyB ? ? ⁿ there exists a convex bodyK having $$m leqslant C(varepsilon ) cdot nlog ^3 n$$ contact points whose Banach-Mazur distance toB is less than 1+?. We prove also that for everyt>1 there exists a convex symmetric body Γ ? ? ⁿ so that every convex bodyD ? ? ⁿ whose Banach-Mazur distance to Γ is less thant has at least (1+c ₀/t ²)·n contact points for some absolute constantc ₀. We apply these results to obtain new factorizations of Dvoretzky-Rogers type and to estimate the size of almost orthogonal submatrices of an orthogonal matrix.