TAGS: Skin Care
Shiseido Company, Limited (“Shiseido”), succeeds in visualizing the capillaries of the whole face precisely in 3D. This achievement was made possible by further developing the unique technology that visualizes facial capillaries without needing to excise the skin.
Approach to Improve Overall Health of Skin
The groundbreaking new technology was finally made a reality through joint research with Professor Wang of the University of Washington, one of the world leaders in vascular observation technologies. The company believes that a holistic approach is important in order to fundamentally improve the overall health of the skin.
OCTA technique can capture precise, depth-resolved images of the blood vessel structure inside the skin without any damage. This new technology is an application of optical coherence tomography, which is already used in the medical field to observe various organs, especially the fundus.
Shiseido’s OCTA visualizes the capillary structure in the skin by capturing the movement of blood and extracting the fluctuations in that movement using uniquely developed algorithms. With this technology, the company has successfully uncovered the relationship between skin blood vessels and beautiful skin.
Visualization of Facial Blood Vessels
In order to visualize the blood vessels in the face of a living person in a wide field of view, researchers needed a system which could detect blood vessels with greater accuracy and speed than ever before. This is necessary to deal with the three-dimensional irregularities of the face and also to exclude the visual noise generated by the body when breathing and from other small movements.
In the latest research, in collaboration with Professor Wang of the University of Washington, the company succeeded in developing a system that visualizes the blood vessel distribution over the whole face using the novel vessel-detection technology.
By capturing the skin blood vessels from such a wide field of view, it becomes possible to accurately understand the characteristics of the blood vessels according to their individual parts. It also makes it possible to detect the partial modulations of blood vessels which are invisible if looking at the skin from the outside. Shiseido expects that this new technology will contribute to great leaps forward in vascular research.
The company hopes to use OCTA to extend conventional care to individual concerns, such as age spots and skin firmness. Shiseido is also developing a concept that covers comprehensive facial care, where scientists will be able to predict future skin conditions by observing the face’s blood vessels. Going forward, Shiseido will continue to pursue research toward the realization of healthy-looking and beautiful skin for consumers while making full use of cutting-edge technologies.
Source: Shiseido