Department of Software Convergence, Graduate School, Soonchunhyang University, Asan City, Chungcheongnam-do, Republic of Korea.
Department of Medical IT Engineering, College of Medical Sciences, Soonchunhyang University, Asan City, Chungcheongnam-do, Republic of Korea.
Skin Res Technol. 2024 Mar;30(3):e13631. doi: 10.1111/srt.13631.
BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: Among the characteristics that appear in the epidermis of the skin, erythema is primarily evaluated through qualitative scales, such as visual assessment (VA). However, VA is not ideal because it relies on the experience and skill of dermatologists. In this study, we propose a new evaluation method based on hyperspectral imaging (HSI) to improve the accuracy of erythema diagnosis in clinical settings and investigate the applicability of HSI to skin evaluation.
For this study, 23 subjects diagnosed with atopic dermatitis were recruited. The inside of the right arm is selected as the target area and photographed using a hyperspectral camera (HS). Subsequently, based on the erythema severity visually assessed by a dermatologist, the severity classification performance of the RGB and HS images is compared.
Erythema severity is classified as high when using (i) all reflectances of the entire HSI band and (ii) a combination of color features (R of RGB, a* of CIELab*) and five selected bands through band selection. However, as the number of features increases, the amount of calculation increases and becomes inefficient; therefore, (ii), which uses only seven features, is considered to perform classification more efficiently than (i), which uses 150 features.
In conclusion, we demonstrate that HSI can be applied to erythema severity classification, which can further increase the accuracy and reliability of diagnosis when combined with other features observed in erythema. Additionally, the scope of its application can be expanded to various studies related to skin pigmentation.
背景/目的：在皮肤表皮的特征中，红斑主要通过定性量表进行评估，如视觉评估（VA）。然而，VA 并不理想，因为它依赖于皮肤科医生的经验和技能。在这项研究中，我们提出了一种基于高光谱成像（HSI）的新评估方法，以提高临床环境中红斑诊断的准确性，并研究 HSI 在皮肤评估中的适用性。
在这项研究中，招募了 23 名被诊断为特应性皮炎的受试者。选择右臂内侧作为目标区域，并使用高光谱相机（HS）拍摄。随后，根据皮肤科医生视觉评估的红斑严重程度，比较 RGB 和 HS 图像的严重程度分类性能。
当使用（i）整个 HSI 波段的所有反射率和（ii）通过波段选择组合颜色特征（RGB 的 R、CIELab的 a）和五个选定波段时，红斑严重程度被分类为高。然而，随着特征数量的增加，计算量增加，效率降低；因此，（ii）仅使用七个特征被认为比（i）更有效地进行分类，（i）使用 150 个特征。
总之，我们证明 HSI 可应用于红斑严重程度分类，当与红斑中观察到的其他特征结合使用时，可以进一步提高诊断的准确性和可靠性。此外，其应用范围可以扩展到与皮肤色素沉着相关的各种研究中。
