Abstract
Visco-elastic properties of skin tissue is strongly dependent on moisture content around epidermal tissue, which should cause skin wrinkles Therefore, an in vivo quantitative measurement of moisture content is necessary to clarify skin mechanics. In this paper, we propose OCM (Optical Coherence Moisturegraphy), which is a method of tomographic micro-visualizing moisture content using low coherence interferometer with 1400 nm band light source. The tomographic detection of the intensity attenuation due to light absorption of water can determine moisture content profile inside skin tissue. The rapid scanning optical delay line was implemented as a reference arm so as to visualize video-rate tomography of moisture content field. In order to verify the proposed system, respective OCT system with 1300 nm and 1400 nm light source were applied separately to a pig skin tissue covered with a moisturizing sheet. Consequently, the interference signal intensity of 1400 nm band, comparing with 1300 nm band, was observed tomograpically to be decreasing exponentially with water diffusion inside skin. It was concluded that OCM has promising potential of diagnosing tomographic moisture content inside skin tissue.
