Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy of Human Skin Using a Commercial Fiber Optic Spectrometer

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is a reliable and easy to implement technique in human tissue characterization. In this work we evaluate the performance of the commercial USB4000 miniature fiber optic spectrometer in the in-vivo measurement of the diffuse reflectance spectra of different healthy skin sites and lesions in a population of 54 volunteers. Results show, that this spectrometer reproduces well the typical signatures of skin spectra over the 400-1000 nm region. Remarkable spectral differences exist between lesions and normal surrounding skin. A diffusion-based model was used to simulate reflectance spectra collected by the optical probe of the system.