Imaging Device

About

Background Skin diseases and degeneration is related to sun exposure, working environment and personal habits, which can be observed in the change of internal structure of skin. Collagen, which is the major component of the dermal structure, is an important factor related to dermal changes. It is critical to inspect collagen structure and quantitatively define status of skin. Histopathological and immune-histochemical studies are commonly used for diagnosing diseases and evaluating dermal changes. But these techniques require biopsy, which may cause scarring and infection and cannot be performed either in vivo or in real time. Collagen content is also a good marker for assessing clinical efficacy of non-ablative fractional treatment (for skin rejuvenation). Technology UMass Lowell researcher, Dr. Anna Yaroslavsky, has developed a polarization-enhanced wide-field reflectance imaging device and methods to image the collagen structure and dermal changes. This approach is in vivo and allows rapid assessment of large skin areas with optical sectioning capability. Applications Assess clinical efficacy of skin rejuvenation treatment. Diagnose skin disease before clinical intrusive analysis Assess status of skin aging Advantages Histopathological study is the gold test for clinical diagnosis, but requires biopsy and can neither be done in vivo nor in real time. UML imaging method is capable of rapid noninvasive assessment of large skin areas in vivo and is entirely harmless and nonintrusive.  Compared to microscopy techniques, such as confocal, two photon and second harmonic, UML imaging method provides orders of magnitude larger field of view combined with sufficient lateral resolution of 15 μm and excellent signal to noise ratio, does not require expensive components and high power densities of light exposure or laser sources.