Jump to content
UltravioletPhotography

Recommended Posts

post-79-0-54240700-1452195176.jpg

 

Here is a picture of a nose. Other things I've found that glow a bit are dead skin, belly button, teeth, nails, and the cones on the back of eyes (never shine a UV light onto your eye though, I did it once but will never do it again). If blackheads on a nose glow orange, I wonder what scars and blood would look like under UV.

 

Tip: It is not ideal to shine large amounts of UV radiation onto your skin and I honestly don't recommend others doing it as it can age your skin faster.

Link to comment

This is very fascination (and entertaining) work, Pylon. Nice job. Quite creative.

 

So ... one has to ask ... I wonder why blackheads turn into "whiteheads", under UV-induced-visible-fluorescence? :lol:

 

(Obviously, the short answer is that it is due to specific chemistry within the blackhead material. But, which specific chemical{s}, is the curiosity that has sparked my interest.)

Link to comment

This paper is quite interesting:

 

Son T, Han B, Jung B, Nelson JS. Fluorescent image analysis for evaluating the condition of facial sebaceous follicles. Skin research and technology : official journal of International Society for Bioengineering and the Skin (ISBS) [and] International Society for Digital Imaging of Skin (ISDIS) [and] International Society for Skin Imaging (ISSI). 2008;14(2):201-207. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0846.2007.00279.x.

 

The condition of sebaceous follicles can be indirectly evaluated by analyzing sebum colors with a UVA-induced fluorescent image. For example, sebaceous follicles filled with inflamed sebum emit a brilliant white, with excessive amount of sebum emit red, and with pH unbalanced sebum emit yellow fluorescence (1, 2). Usually, normal sebaceous follicles do not fluoresce.

See figure 2 for more glowing noses. :)

 

Then this book has some work on what is producing the fluorescence (which gets more to the core of your question):

ORIGINS OF FLUORESCENCE SIGNALS FROM SEBACEOUS FOLLICLES

 

Sebaceous follicles emit light in the visible spectrum when excited by UV light (Fig. 1). This phenomenon of "orange-red lightning of pores' was first described by the German dermatologist Bommer in 1927 (9). The main fluorescent chromo-phore responsible for red Fluorescence of sebaceous follicles could already be identified as bacterial protoporphyrin by Cornelius and Ludwig in 1967 (5). In 1989 Sauermann et al. showed by fluorescence spectroscopy that the follicular Fluorescence is indeed mainly caused and dominated by porphyries, but also other fluorophores emitting light In the green-yellow range are involved (6). Red and green Fluorescence in this case can often be located in different layers of the pilo-sebaceous follicle (Fig. 2.) In 1989, Kligman and Pagnoni were able to demonstrate a strong decrease of red bacterial porphyrin fluorescence during treatment with the anti-bacterial compound benuoyl peroxide (13110) (7), whereas a greenish fluorescence of the follicles remained unaltered (Fig 3).

 

Given the above results, we assumed that the fluorescence signal of the comedone is composed of two components: a red component stemming from bacterial porphyries, and a green one stemming from endogenous Fluorochromes which are not sensitive to antibacterial treatment. This implies that in vivo follicular spectroscopy with the capability differentiate and quantitate both green and red fluorescence in parallel would give additional valuable information about comedones. The green fluorescence, which we attribute to endogenous fluorochromes, would indicate sebaceous gland activity, whereas the red fluorescence, whose source is bacterial porphyrins, would indicate the microbiological status of the sebaceous duct.

Comodones are medical-ese for black/whiteheads.

Link to comment

Good reference. Porphyrins. Met those somewhere else once upon a time.

 

Yuk on nose pores though. The nose needs some of those strips that pull that stuff off. Can't think what they are called.

Link to comment
  • 1 year later...
Bit of a thread resurrection, but I've used this technique (UV fluorescence) a few times in skin studies - looking at porphyrin reduction on the face as a result of either cleansing or a change in skin care routine. The commercially available imaging systems from Canfield used for photographing skin has this capability built in.
Link to comment

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...