Measurement of water content distribution on skin surface using polarization imaging

Abstract

A new method for measuring two-dimensional water content distribution on skin surface is presented. Water content of the stratum corneum affects the scattering properties over the skin surface. The difference of the scattering properties are visualized by introducing the polarization imaging technique. Polarization imaging enables us to divide reflected light into polarization maintained light and depolarized light which correspond to superficially reflected light and deeply penetrated light, respectively.