Sugawara Tomoko, Nakagawa Noriaki, Shimizu Norio, Hirai Nami, Saijo Yoshifumi, Sakai Shingo
Skin Care Products Research, Kao Corporation, Odawara, Kanagawa, Japan.
Biomedical Imaging Laboratory, Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan.
Skin Res Technol. 2019 May;25(3):347-354. doi: 10.1111/srt.12657. Epub 2019 Jan 4.
While determining sebaceous gland morphology is useful in the treatment of skin disorders such as acne, a non-invasive assessment method has not been developed. Since age and gender affect sebum level, differences in sebaceous gland morphology according to these factors were investigated.
Facial skin was measured using a high-frequency three-dimensional ultrasound microscope. First, the ultrasound images were compared with skin sections. Next, we assessed sebaceous gland morphology. Images of sebaceous gland in the cheeks of young male, young female and elderly female subjects were obtained using ultrasound microscopy, and en face images were processed to measure the sebaceous gland area.
In the ultrasound images, sebaceous glands and also thin collagen fibers, which surrounded the glands, could be detected as low-intensity regions. We called them sebaceous units. In young male subjects, the sebaceous unit areas 900-μm beneath the skin surface were larger than those at 700 μm. In contrast, depth-dependent differences in sebaceous unit area were not observed in young female subjects, indicating that males had cauliflower-shaped sebaceous glands while young females had somewhat more cylindrical and smaller sebaceous glands than the young males. Regarding age, the areas of sebaceous units at 900 μm were diminished and the depth of maximum area was shallower in elderly female subjects compared to young female subjects. Hence, sebaceous glands are considered to shrink with age.
Differences in facial sebaceous unit morphology between genders as well as by age groups could be observed using high-frequency ultrasound microscopy.
虽然确定皮脂腺形态对痤疮等皮肤疾病的治疗有用，但尚未开发出非侵入性评估方法。由于年龄和性别会影响皮脂水平，因此研究了皮脂腺形态在这些因素方面的差异。
使用高频三维超声显微镜测量面部皮肤。首先，将超声图像与皮肤切片进行比较。接下来，我们评估皮脂腺形态。使用超声显微镜获取年轻男性、年轻女性和老年女性受试者脸颊皮脂腺的图像，并对正面图像进行处理以测量皮脂腺面积。
在超声图像中，皮脂腺以及围绕腺体的细胶原纤维可被检测为低强度区域。我们将它们称为皮脂腺单位。在年轻男性受试者中，皮肤表面以下900μm处的皮脂腺单位面积大于700μm处的。相比之下，在年轻女性受试者中未观察到皮脂腺单位面积的深度依赖性差异，这表明男性的皮脂腺呈菜花状，而年轻女性的皮脂腺比年轻男性的更呈圆柱形且更小。关于年龄，与年轻女性受试者相比，老年女性受试者900μm处的皮脂腺单位面积减小，最大面积深度变浅。因此，皮脂腺被认为会随着年龄增长而萎缩。
使用高频超声显微镜可以观察到不同性别以及不同年龄组之间面部皮脂腺单位形态的差异。
