Analysis of skin morphological features and real-time monitoring using snapshot hyperspectral imaging.

We propose a snapshot hyperspectral imaging system and methods for skin morphological feature analysis and real-time monitoring of skin activities. The analysis method includes a strategy using weighted subtractions between sub-channel images to extract absorption information due to specific chromophores within skin tissue, for example hemoglobin and melanin. Based on morphological analysis results, we carry out real-time monitoring of the skin features to verify the ability of this method to provide temporal responses of the skin tissue activities, which is experimentally shown to be useful in the measurement of heartrate, monitoring of the tissue recovery after a body exercise, and studying of the tissue response due to a vascular occlusion. Compared to conventional multispectral imaging system, the proposed system improves the device simplicity and is immune to motion artifacts. Coupled with the extraction algorithms, the hyperspectral imaging promises a robust skin assessment tool with abilities for qualitative visualization and potentially quantitative analysis of skin features, useful in the applications of cosmetics and clinical dermatology.