Patent ID: 8725236

Claim:
A method of reducing the emergence of pimples comprising the steps of: a) using a hyperspectral camera to acquire sequential images of skin filtered at characteristic narrow spectral bands, the images constituting a spectral image cube and each area of the image corresponds to a reflectance spectrum of the imaged skin area, the hyperspectral camera comprising a linear polarizing filter comprising from 4 to 50 narrow band filters in the spectral range of 400-1000 nm with at least 4 filters in the spectral range of 560-730 nm, and a light source having a linear polarizer oriented vertical to a polarization plane of the camera polarizer; b) analyzing the acquired images by calculating absorption spectra for acquired pixel values in the image as the negative logarithm of a ratio of the image at each wavelength to the corresponding image of a white reflectance standard at the corresponding wavelength to determine relative concentrations of at least one skin chromophore; c) creating an erythema map of the imaged skin using the concentration value of the at least one skin chromophore at each corresponding area of the image; and d) comparing the erythema map to at least one broad spectrum, visible-light image of the imaged skin area to identify any area of pre-emergent pimples not evident in the visible-light image; and e) applying a composition to the pre-emergent lesion to reduce the emergence of pimples.