• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.11 no.6
• /
• pp.1825-1838
• /
• 2016

The detection of skin pigment is crucial in the diagnosis of skin diseases and in the evaluation of medical cosmetics and hairdressing. Accuracy in the detection is a basis for the prompt cure of skin diseases. This study presents a method to recognize and measure human skin pigment using Hemoglobin-Melanin (HM) coordinate. The proposed method extracts the skin area through a Gaussian skin-color model estimated from statistical analysis and decomposes the skin area into two pigments of hemoglobin and melanin using an Independent Component Analysis (ICA) algorithm. Then, we divide the two-dimensional (2D) HM coordinate into rectangular bins and compute the location histograms of hemoglobin and melanin for all the bins. We label the skin pigment of hemoglobin, melanin, and normal skin on all bins according to the Bayesian classifier. These bin-based HM projective histograms can quantify the skin pigment and compute the standard deviation on the total quantification of skin pigments surrounding normal skin. We tested our scheme using images taken under different illumination conditions. Several cosmetic coverings were used to test the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed method can detect skin pigments with more accuracy and evaluate cosmetic covering effects more effectively than conventional methods.

• Journal of Photoscience
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.213-216
• /
• 2002

Skin pigmentation, also known as complexion coloration, results from the biosynthesis of melanin within the melanocytes of the Stratum basalum and the subsequent transfer, translocation, and degradation of this pigment to, in, and by the neighboring keratinocytes respectively, Melanins are produced and retained in melanosomes synthesized in the cell body that are translocated along the dendrites using microtubules via motor proteins. Melanosomes are eventually captured and retained at the tips of dendrites by attachment to the peripherally localized actin. Melanosomes reaching the dendritic tips are transferred to keratinocytes, primarily via phagocytosis of released melanosomes by keratinocytes. Molecules responsible for cell/cell recognition and interaction that regulate transfer are being identified. Some of these putative mediators appear to be affected by ultraviolet radiation. After the keratinocytes receive melanosomes, the granules are distributed individually or as clusters in dark versus light skin respectively. These melanosomes are then aggregated over the nucleus for photoprotection ofkeratinocyte DNA and eventually degraded.