Measurement of Natural Skin Pigmentation by the Method of Remittend Spectrophotometry

Overview

Background:
Remittend spectrophotometry is non invasive investigation method, which is notyet routinely used in dermatological clinical practice. In this short study we evaluated possibilitiesof its use in a measurement of human skin natural pigmentation intensity.Material and methods: During winter and spring months we performed evaluation of skinphototype by means of adopted questionnaire method followed by remittend spectrophometrymeasurement of non sun-exposed skin of buttocks in 64 healthy volunteers. The spectrophotometrymeasurement yielded a continual curve of dependency of electromagnetic radiation in range of400-950 nm remittence on its wave length. We performed transversal analysis and compared measurementresults with skin phototype of volunteers obtained by questionnaire.Results: Calculation of average score for every questionnaire question used in the tested groupwith the same skin phototype we found a continual increase of this score from a skin phototype I toa skin phototype IV in all questions of the questionnaire. By a comparison of spectrophotometriccurves we found out measurable differences in individuals of different skin phototype. The differencesbetween individual skin phototypes correspond to known biophysical properties of the skin.Conclusion: The used questionnaire method is suitable for differentiation of Caucasians in4 known group according to a skin phototype. The remittend spectrophotometry is a rapid non-invasiveinvestigation method which offers objective results of skin color measurement including theintensity of its natural pigmentation.

Key words:
remittend spectrophotometry - natural pigmentation - phototype - skin color