In-vivo characterization of optical properties of pigmented skin lesions including melanoma using oblique incidence diffuse reflectance spectrometry.

In this letter, we report the first use of oblique incidence diffuse reflectance spectrometry to conduct in-vivo measurements of optical properties of three different types of pigmented skin lesions, including melanoma, dysplastic, and common nevi. Both absorption and reduced scattering coefficient spectra were estimated from the spatially resolved diffuse reflectance within the wavelength range of 455-765 nm for 144 pigmented skin lesions including 16 melanomas. The absorption and reduced scattering spectra were found to change with the malignancy of the skin lesions, which were generally higher for the malignant cases than the benign ones. Based on the measurement results, the physiological origin leading to the change of the absorption and scattering properties is also discussed.