Evaluation of Effects of Hydroquinone on Pigmentation by Spectroscopy Image Analysis

Abstract

Generally, depigmentation efficacy is evaluated by analyzing the L value of skin to which the objective agent has been applied. However, in this method, slight inflammation and blood circulation affect the brightness, and then disturb the evaluation. So novel method that is able to quantitate melanin coloration accurately has been required. In this report, we modified the image-processing method that was devised by Takiwaki et al. Our method can evaluate pigmentation degree and area quantitatively. Using this method, we evaluated the availability of hydroquinone agent, which has high whitening effectiveness clinically; in addition, we examined the validity of this method.