Evaluation of Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy Vegetal Phantoms for Human Pigmented Skin Lesions

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2024-10, Vol.24 (21), p.7010
• Main Authors: Buendia-Aviles, Sonia, Cunill-Rodríguez, Margarita, Delgado-Atencio, José A, González-Gutiérrez, Enrique, Arce-Diego, José L, Fanjul-Vélez, Félix
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; biological tissue phantoms; Detectors; diffuse reflectance spectroscopy; Enzymes; Fruits; Humans; Melanoma; Melanoma - diagnosis; Melanoma - diagnostic imaging; Melanoma - pathology; Microscopy; Monte Carlo Method; Monte Carlo simulation; Optical properties; Phantoms, Imaging; pigmented skin lesions; Principal Component Analysis; Skin; Skin - chemistry; Skin - diagnostic imaging; Skin - pathology; Skin cancer; skin diagnosis; Skin lesions; Skin Neoplasms - diagnosis; Skin Neoplasms - diagnostic imaging; Skin Neoplasms - pathology; Skin Pigmentation - physiology; Spectrum analysis; Spectrum Analysis - methods; Tumors
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s24217010

Pigmented skin lesions have increased considerably worldwide in the last years, with melanoma being responsible for 75% of deaths and low survival rates. The development and refining of more efficient non-invasive optical techniques such as diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) is crucial for the diagnosis of melanoma skin cancer. The development of novel diagnostic approaches requires a sufficient number of test samples. Hence, the similarities between banana brown spots (BBSs) and human skin pigmented lesions (HSPLs) could be exploited by employing the former as an optical phantom for validating these techniques. This work analyses the potential similarity of BBSs to HSPLs of volunteers with different skin phototypes by means of several characteristics, such as symmetry, color RGB tonality, and principal component analysis (PCA) of spectra. The findings demonstrate a notable resemblance between the attributes concerning spectrum, area, and color of HSPLs and BBSs at specific ripening stages. Furthermore, the spectral similarity is increased when a fiber-optic probe with a shorter distance (240 µm) between the source fiber and the detector fiber is utilized, in comparison to a probe with a greater distance (2500 µm) for this parameter. A Monte Carlo simulation of sampling volume was used to clarify spectral similarities.