SkinScan: Low-Cost 3D-Scanning for Dermatologic Diagnosis and Documentation
This addresses the need for accessible dermatologic diagnosis in underdeveloped areas, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing 3D imaging techniques.
The authors tackled the problem of expensive 3D scanning for dermatology by developing a low-cost system using commodity devices, achieving detailed 3D skin measurements with a 3D-gradient-illumination-based method.
The utilization of computational photography becomes increasingly essential in the medical field. Today, imaging techniques for dermatology range from two-dimensional (2D) color imagery with a mobile device to professional clinical imaging systems measuring additional detailed three-dimensional (3D) data. The latter are commonly expensive and not accessible to a broad audience. In this work, we propose a novel system and software framework that relies only on low-cost (and even mobile) commodity devices present in every household to measure detailed 3D information of the human skin with a 3D-gradient-illumination-based method. We believe that our system has great potential for early-stage diagnosis and monitoring of skin diseases, especially in vastly populated or underdeveloped areas.