Proposal of quantitative index of skin texture by the image processing and its practical application

There are many cosmetic companies and visual appreciation is undertaken by human expert though, skin texture has not been investigated quantitatively and automatically so far. In this study, image processing method for analyzing skin texture is proposed. Since sulci is very important for expressing skin texture, we apply cross binarization method for extracting sulci and by matching short lines onto sulci extracted, sulci is expressed by short lines. By analyzing short lines in terms of number, direction, and so on, quantitative indices are suggested for displaying feature of sulci. We then investigate whether it is available or not to predict visual appreciation score by quantitative indices. By using multiple linear regression analysis, we find that visual appreciation score is predictable in high rate by using quantitative indices we have proposed. This method comes into practical use since January 2009.