One-stop-solution for making your digital skin analysers

In the skincare industry, the products and services offered for skin differ largely according to a person’s skin type. Medical practitioners use skin analysers to determine the client’s skin type and concerns. A skin analyser is a skin imaging equipment that analyses the skin in depth. It is integrated with a high-resolution camera that can extract minute details of the skin.

These are widely used in dermatology clinics, the skincare product manufacturing industry, and beauty retail outlets to provide users with personalised skin diagnosis and treatment. Sebum, pigment, collagen, elasticity, pores, acne sensitivity, and moisture are some of the most common factors of the skin determined by skin analysers. These machines improve diagnostic accuracy and thereby improve aftercare.

In this blog, we are exploring types of skin analysers prevalent in the industry and giving insights on the kind of cameras that should be used to get the best results.

Types of skin analysers

Skin analysers are broadly of two types. Handheld skin analysers and tabletop skin analysers. Both of these skin analysers differ primarily in the magnitude of analysis they perform.

Handheld analysers are easy to use and portable. These are often used for preliminary and small-scale analysis. They come with high-resolution magnifying cameras to analyse a small section of skin in detail. As the name suggests, these can be used and operated handheld due to their compact nature.

Tabletop analysers serve the purpose of detailed skin analysis. As the name suggests, these tabletop devices perform analysis on a more extensive skin area. Tabletop analysers often require multiple cameras and needs high-performing processors. When compared to handheld skin analysers, these also require larger power consumption.

Here is a look into various types of skin analysers in detail.

1. Dermatoscopes: A dermatoscope is a hand-held skin analyser device. Dermatoscopes comprise a high-definition video camera, a high-magnification polarising lens, and multiple ultra-bright LEDs. It can be used to examine and diagnose skin lesions and diseases, such as melanoma. It can also help a person examine the scalp, hair, and nails. These are easy-to-use, versatile devices.
2. 3D Skin Imaging Systems: 3D skin imaging systems capture the entire skin surface in macro quality resolution with a single capture. In these systems, one 3D capture covers nearly all of the patient’s skin, saving photography time and improving patient comfort. 3D skin imaging system provides ultra-high resolution 3D images, which reduces the number of close-up images required. These are integrated with software that allows clinicians to map and monitor pigmented lesions and distributed diseases of the skin.
3. Digital Dermoscopy Systems: Digital dermoscopy is performed by carrying out a microscopic examination of the entire skin surface, locating lesions, photographing them, and representing them on complete body maps. These non-invasive methodologies require high-resolution microscopic cameras and image-processing integrations to recognise skin conditions.
4. Mole Mapping Systems: Mole mapping systems use a high-resolution professional camera and advanced software to map a patient’s entire skin surface, creating a photographic baseline of all their moles. This methodology requires high-resolution digital photographs and sophisticated software to monitor the moles on the skin. Using digital mole mapping, dermatologists can more easily spot new moles and moles that are rapidly changing – one of the possible signs of melanoma.

Cameras are an integral part of any skin analyser. The performance of an analyser is directly proportional to the number and resolution of cameras used in it.

What e-con Systems have to offer in digital skin analyser technologies

e-con Systems has 20+ years of experience designing, developing, and manufacturing OEM cameras. It provides a complete solution for digital skin analyser camera and processor requirements. Let us look at the two types of skin analysers and their specified camera, processor & lens requirements.

Handheld skin analyser

A high-resolution 20 MP camera integrated with a Qualcomm processor and a macro imaging lens is recommended for a handheld skin analyser. Handheld skin analysers are compact and portable devices and, hence, require energy-efficient processors. A macro lens is used as the subject will be near the device as opposed to tabletop skin analysers.

Qualcomm processors are ideal for handheld skin analysers due to their compact form factor. These processors can fit into slim profiles of handheld skin analysers, maintaining a sleek and lightweight design. These processors are also optimised for energy efficiency to prolong battery life, which makes them suitable for handheld devices. Qualcomm processors also support wireless connectivity, USB, MIPI-CSI, and varied camera & sensor interfaces.

A 20MP sensor resolution should be used to meet the intricate imaging requirements of a handheld skin analyser. This will provide high-resolution images coupled with high-quality digital zooming capability, retaining minute details of the target area.

Tabletop skin analyser

A high-resolution 20MP camera with an NVIDIA processor will meet the high-performance, high-power requirements of a tabletop skin analyser. This variation of the skin analyser is a stationary device often equipped with multiple cameras, leading to a bigger form factor and processing requirements.

The NVIDIA processors are power efficient and deliver high performance with their parallel processing capabilities. The multiple-camera model of the tabletop skin analyser is also required for it to have deep learning and AI image processing units. NVIDIA processors also support high-speed PCIe, HDMI, CUDA, AI/ML tensor cores, and GDDR memory interfaces. An efficient and high-speed image processing unit contributes largely to the performance of tabletop analysers.

A high-resolution 20MP camera with the following attributes meets the skin analyser camera needs:

• Multi-camera support
• Lowlight & NIR
• High FPS
• Finetuned ISP
• Multiple Interfaces Support