The Effect of Sun Tan Lotion on Skin by Using Skin TEWL and Skin Water Content Measurements

Stratum corneum (SC) is the outermost skin layer. SC hydration is important for its cosmetic properties and barrier function. SC trans-epidermal water loss (TEWL) measurements and skin water content measurements are two key indexes used for SC characterisation. The instrument stability and accuracy are vitally important when measuring small changes. In this paper, we present our latest study on the effect of sun tan lotion on skin by using skin TEWL and skin water content measurements. We developed techniques to improve the measurement stability and to visualise small changes, as well as developed machine learning algorithms for processing the skin capacitive images. The overall results show that TEWL and skin water content measurements are capable of measuring the subtle changes of skin conditions due to the application of sun tan lotions. The results show that the TEWL values decreased after the sun tan lotion application. The sun tan lotion with SPF 20 had the lowest decrease, whilst the sun tan lotion with SPF 50+ had the highest decrease. The results also show that the skin water content increased after the sun tan lotion application, with SPF 20 having the highest increase, whilst SPF 50+ had the lowest increase.

In vivo skin capacitive imaging analysis by using grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM)

We present our latest work on in vivo skin capacitive imaging analysis by using grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM). The in vivo skin capacitive images were taken by a capacitance based fingerprint sensor, the skin capacitive images were then analysed by GLCM. Four different GLCM feature vectors, angular second moment (ASM), entropy (ENT), contrast (CON) and correlation (COR), are selected to describe the skin texture. The results show that angular second moment increases as age increases, and entropy decreases as age increases. The results also suggest that the angular second moment values and the entropy values reflect more about the skin texture, whilst the contrast values and the correlation values reflect more about the topically applied solvents. The overall results shows that the GLCM is an effective way to extract and analyse the skin texture information, which can potentially be a valuable reference for evaluating effects of medical and cosmetic treatments.