Introduction The colour of tissue is often of clinicaluse in the diagnosis of tissue homeostasis andphysiological responses to various stimuli.Determining tissue colour changes and borders,however, often poses an intricate problem and visualexamination, constituting clinical praxis, does notallow them to be objectively characterized orquantified. Demands for increased inter- and intraobserverreproducibility have been incentives for theintroduction of objective methods and techniques fortissue colour (e.g. erythema) evaluation. The aim ofthe present paper was to study the border zone of anUVB provoked erythematous response of humanskin in terms of blood volume and oxygenationmeasured by means of diffuse reflectancespectroscopy using a commercial probe.
Material and Methods A provocation model, basedon partial masking of irradiated skin areas, definestwo erythema edges at every skin site responding tothe UV irradiation. In every subject, 5 test sites wereexposed with a constant UV light irradiance (14mW/cm2), but with different exposures times (0, 3,6, 9, 12 seconds). An analysis of the spectral datameasured across the two edges was performed for every scan line. The oxygenized and deoxygenizedhemoglobin contents were estimated in everymeasurement point, using a modified Beer-Lambertmodel.
Results The fit of the experimental data to the model derived by the modified Beer-Lambert law was excellent (R2>0.95). Analyzing data for the chromophore content showed that the erythematous response in provoked areas is dominated by the increase in oxyhemoglobin. The width for the left and right border zone was estimated to 1.81±0.93 mm and 1.90±0.88 mm respectively (M±SD). The unprovoked area between the two edges was estimated to 0.77±0.68 mm.
Conclusion While the chosen data analysis performed satisfactory, the ability of the probe design to differentiate spatial aspects of a reaction with abrupt borders was found to be suboptimal resulting in a probable overestimation of the erythematous edge slope. Probe modification or imaging are possible solutions.