Color-corrected dermoscopy for objective skin color measurement

Maysoon Harunani, Patricia K. Mansfield, Leonid Shmuylovich
Conference
Photonics West BiOS
Photonics in Dermatology and Plastic Surgery 2025
March 19th, 2025
Oral
DOI
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Abstract

Objective skin color measurements are useful to measure disease progression and ensure clinical trials enroll diverse participants. Colorimeters derive color measurements in the L*a*b* color space but can be difficult to use at certain sites. The L*,b* plane is useful for calculating the Individual Typology Angle (ITA), which is used to quantify melanin content. Photography has been considered a tool for colorimetry but has been limited in maintaining color consistency. Therefore, we utilized a dermatoscope, a polarized 10x magnified epiluminescence imaging device, with a 9.5x5.6mm 30-color calibration target for color correction. For 23 subjects with various pigmentation, ITA from -52° to 65°, the ITA was calculated from corrected and uncorrected images and compared to ITA from a Konika Minolta CM700d spectrophotometer. The mean error for corrected ITA values was lower than uncorrected and had a stronger correlation to measured ITA indicating the feasibility of color-corrected dermatoscope as a colorimeter.

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Citation

Maysoon Harunani, Patricia K. Mansfield, Leonid Shmuylovich, “Color-corrected dermoscopy for objective skin color measurement (Conference Presentation),” Proc. SPIE PC13292, Photonics in Dermatology and Plastic Surgery 2025, PC132920F (19 March 2025); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3044116