Monte Carlo simulation of light reflection from cosmetic powder particles near the human skin surface

Abstract

Abstract. The reflection and scattering properties of light incident on human skin covered with powder particles have been investigated. A three-layer skin structure with a pigmented area is modeled, and the propagation of light in the skin's layers and in a layer of particles near the skin's surface is simulated using the Monte Carlo method. Assuming that only single scattering of light occurs in the powder layer, the simulation results show that the reflection spectra of light from the skin change with the size of powder particles. The color difference between normal and discolored skin is found to decrease considerably when powder particles with a diameter of approximately 0.25 μm are present near the skin's surface. The effects of the medium surrounding the particles, and the influence of the distribution of particle size (polydispersity), are also examined. It is shown that a surrounding medium with a refractive index close to that of the skin substantially suppresses the extreme spectral changes caused by the powder particles covering the skin surface. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

Highly Scattering Hierarchical Porous Polymer Microspheres with a High-Refractive Index Inorganic Surface for a Soft-Focus Effect

“…The soft-focus effect refers to the phenomenon in which the lens is blurred in photography. This blurring phenomenon can be achieved by soft-focus powder as a filler in various fields, and a representative example is cosmetic powder [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]. Current cosmetic foundations focus on raw materials that exhibit optical properties through high-refractive-index inorganic particles in order to provide a good coverage for three-dimensional skin defects such as wrinkles, spots, pores, and irregularities.…”

Spatially Resolved Spectral Powder Analysis: Experiments and Modeling

“…39 The penetration depth into pharmaceutical materials was investigated by Shi et al 40 and Abrahamsson et al 41 Pilorget et al took into account the roughness and albedo of grains. 42 Okamoto et al studied single powder layers with varying particle size, 43 and Tran et al assessed the response of a fiber optical setup for various particle sizes. 44 An analytical solution for two-dimensional (2D) granular materials was provided by Sadjadi et al 45 Svensson et al dealt with porous media, consisting of scattering shapes and voids.…”

“…42 Okamoto et al. studied single powder layers with varying particle size, 43 and Tran et al. assessed the response of a fiber optical setup for various particle sizes.…”

Light source distribution and scattering phase function influence light transport in diffuse multi-layered media

“…Monte Carlo methods have been widely used for several transport problems [13,14] and for numerical simulations of photon propagation in multilayered biological tissues [15][16][17][18][19] or within tissue-like diffusing phantoms [20,21]. The knowledge of laser light transport through the human skin allows to improve therapy applications [17], cosmetic analysis [22], or to reproduce the human face with more accuracy [5]. In this last case, the specular and diffuse light coming from the location of the light source which illuminates the skin surface are studied with respect to different observation angles.…”