| 20110206254 | REFLECTANCE IMAGING AND ANALYSIS FOR EVALUATING TISSUE PIGMENTATION - Methods and apparatus are described that provide the ability to estimate the diffuse reflection component of an image of tissue such as skin captured without cross-polarization. It is thereby possible to estimate skin pigmentation information from an image of skin captured conventionally, such as, for example, a total reflection image, obtained in a conventional manner by shining white light on the skin and capturing the reflected light. The image may also be a partially diffuse reflection image, such as a low quality cross-polarized image. The diffuse reflection component of a captured image can then be further processed to obtain Red and Brown pigmentation images, useful for indicating the distribution of hemoglobin and melanin, the primary chromophores of skin. Additionally, a standard captured image of skin can be analyzed to obtain an estimate of the surface reflection component of the reflected light. The surface reflection component can then be used to generate a surface reflection image, useful for showing the distribution of light on the skin and to highlight superficial features such as wrinkles, fine lines, folds, pores, texture, and visible spots. | 08-25-2011 |
| 20090196475 | AUTOMATIC MASK DESIGN AND REGISTRATION AND FEATURE DETECTION FOR COMPUTER-AIDED SKIN ANALYSIS - Methods and systems for automatically generating a mask delineating a region of interest (ROI) within an image containing skin are disclosed. The image may be of an anatomical area containing skin, such as the face, neck, chest, shoulders, arms or hands, among others, or may be of portions of such areas, such as the cheek, forehead, or nose, among others. The mask that is generated is based on the locations of anatomical features or landmarks in the image, such as the eyes, nose, eyebrows and lips, which can vary from subject to subject and image to image. As such, masks can be adapted to individual subjects and to different images of the same subjects, while delineating anatomically standardized ROIs, thereby facilitating standardized, reproducible skin analysis over multiple subjects and/or over multiple images of each subject. Moreover, the masks can be limited to skin regions that include uniformly illuminated portions of skin while excluding skin regions in shadow or hot-spot areas that would otherwise provide erroneous feature analysis results. Methods and systems are also disclosed for automatically registering a skin mask delineating a skin ROI in a first image captured in one imaging modality (e.g., standard white light, UV light, polarized light, multi-spectral absorption or fluorescence imaging, etc.) onto a second image of the ROI captured in the same or another imaging modality. Such registration can be done using linear as well as non-linear spatial transformation techniques. | 08-06-2009 |
