The researchers in the article “Development of a Method for the Determination of Human Skin Moisture Using a Portable Near-Infrared System” sought to create a more accurate and portable method of determining skin moisture. They conducted research to determine what moisture-detecting systems were already in place and created their portable near-infrared system (NIR) based on a more expensive model.
To test their NIR system, the researchers began with a group of 6 hairless mouse dorsal skin from two different male mice. The skins were first soaked in water for one hour so they could contain the maximum amount of water possible. The device was used on the skins every hour during a 90-hour period as they dried.
Afterwards, the device’s effectiveness was tested on 10 human participants’ arm skin. All of the experiments were performed in the same environmental conditions within a lab. Throughout the entire experiment, the conventional scanning-type NIR spectrometer—the more expensive NIR system that the researchers used as a baseline for their research—was used to compare results.
The researchers found that their portable NIR system was more accurate to use than the methodologies used to measure skin moisture before. This was due to the fact that their system was faster and was less sensitive to external environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity.
Woo, Young-Ah Ahn, Jhii-Weon, Chun, In-Koo, and Kim, Hyo-Jin. (2001). Development of a Method for the Determination of Human Skin Moisture Using a Portable Near-Infrared System. Analytical Chemistry, 73, 4964-4971.
