Non-contact assessment of melanin distribution via multispectral temporal illumination coding

Robert Amelard; Christian Scharfenberger; Alexander Wong; David A. Clausi

doi:10.1117/12.2078393

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5 March 2015 Non-contact assessment of melanin distribution via multispectral temporal illumination coding

Robert Amelard, Christian Scharfenberger, Alexander Wong, David A. Clausi

Proceedings Volume 9316, Multimodal Biomedical Imaging X; 93160N (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2078393
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2015, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Melanin is a pigment that is highly absorptive in the UV and visible electromagnetic spectra. It is responsible for perceived skin tone, and protects against harmful UV effects. Abnormal melanin distribution is often an indicator for melanoma. We propose a novel approach for non-contact melanin distribution via multispectral temporal illumination coding to estimate the two-dimensional melanin distribution based on its absorptive characteristics. In the proposed system, a novel multispectral, cross-polarized, temporally-coded illumination sequence is synchronized with a camera to measure reflectance under both multispectral and ambient illumination. This allows us to eliminate the ambient illumination contribution from the acquired reflectance measurements, and also to determine the melanin distribution in an observed region based on the spectral properties of melanin using the Beer-Lambert law. Using this information, melanin distribution maps can be generated for objective, quantitative assessment of skin type of individuals. We show that the melanin distribution map correctly identifies areas with high melanin densities (e.g., nevi).

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Robert Amelard, Christian Scharfenberger, Alexander Wong, and David A. Clausi "Non-contact assessment of melanin distribution via multispectral temporal illumination coding", Proc. SPIE 9316, Multimodal Biomedical Imaging X, 93160N (5 March 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2078393

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