Thermographic mapping of the skin surface in biometric evaluation of cellulite treatment effectiveness

Background: Cellulite is one of the worst tolerated aesthetic imperfections. Edema that accompanies cellulite causes disorders of blood flow what may be observed as changes in the skin surface temperature. The aim of this paper was to develop a new method based on the analysis and processing of thermal images of the skin for biometric evaluation of severity of cellulite and monitoring its treatment.

Methods: The observations of the treatment effects were conducted on 10 females (33.4 ± 6.4 years). Thermal images of the volunteers' thighs were captured before starting the therapy (T₀ ). In the following stages: T₁ , T₂ , and T₃ , thermal images were captured 2 weeks after the first, second and third Alidya treatment administration, respectively. Profiled algorithms were developed to determine the mean Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) contrast in the acquired thermograms.

Results: The mean GLCM contrast for the phase T₀ was 70.91, and for the stages T₁ , T₂ , and T₃ : 57.78, 41.80, and 38.53, respectively.

Conclusion: The use of proposed method (GLCM contrast) enables biometric evaluation of the effectiveness of cellulite treatment. Traditionally used parameters of infrared analysis such as local points of the maximum and minimum temperature or the median temperatures are not useful in thermal, biometric evaluation of anti-cellulite preparations.