Applications of Capacitive Imaging in Human Skin Texture and Hair Analysis

Abstract

This article focuses on the extraction of information from human skin and scalp hair for evaluation of a subject's condition in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. It uses capacitive images from existing hand-held research equipment and it applies image processing algorithms to expand their possible applications. The literature review introduces the readers into the field of skin research, and it highlights pieces of information that can be extracted by in vivo skin and ex vivo hair measurements. Then, the selected scientific equipment is presented, and Maxwell-based electrostatic simulations are employed to evaluate the measurement apparatus. Image analysis algorithms are suggested for (a) the detection of polygons on the human skin texture, (b) the estimation of wrinkles length and (c) the observation of hair water sorption capabilities by capacitive imaging systems. Finally, experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the presented algorithms and the results are compared with the literature. The results indicate that capacitive imaging systems can be used for skin age classification, detection and tracking of skin artifacts (e.g., wrinkles, moles or scars) and calculation of water content in hair samples.

In Vivo Assessment of Water Content, Trans-Epidermial Water Loss and Thickness in Human Facial Skin

“…Mapping skin in terms of its properties has a long history and has received increasing attention in the last two decades. This in part reflects the evolution of the measuring devices, some of which have become available only in recent times [10][11][12]. Research about regional differences of the skin thickness dates back to the early 1970s with the works of Holbrook et al [13] and has generated a number of relevant studies since [4,[14][15][16].…”

Skin Characterizations by Using Contact Capacitive Imaging and High-Resolution Ultrasound Imaging with Machine Learning Algorithms

“…Skin Contact Capacitive Imaging is a promising, novel imaging technique based on the dielectric constant measurement principle, which has been used not only for skin water content measurements, but also for solvent penetration measurements [6], skin texture/microrelief and hair water content measurements [7,8]. With Skin Contact Capacitive Imaging, we have studied the water content of different facial skin sites.…”

“…It was originally developed for biometric applications, and has found applications for skin water content as well as skin texture measurements [1][2][3][4][5]. Our previous studies show that with Contact Capacitive Imaging we can analyze skin water content, skin solvent penetrations, skin texture and skin micro-relief analysis [6][7][8][9].…”

Special Issue Texture and Color in Image Analysis

“…Bhattacharjee et al [6] investigated automated grading of prostate cancer from histology images. Their method is based on four steps: (1) segmentation of the input images via k-means; Bontozoglou and Xiao [7] explored assessing a person's condition from capacitive images of their hair and skin. Concretely, they attempted to determine whether a capacitive imaging sensor in combination with image processing algorithms such as gradient-based segmentation, gray level co-occurrence matrix, and normalized cross-correlation could be used in different hair and skin analysis tasks that are of great interest to the cosmetic and pharmaceutic industries, namely, the detection of skin polygons, the estimation of the bounding wrinkles length, and the observation of hair water sorption capabilities.…”