Synthesis of Human Skin Pigmentation Disorders

Abstract

Changes in the human pigmentary system can lead to imbalances in the distribution of melanin in the skin resulting in artefacts known as pigmented lesions. Our work takes as departing point biological data regarding human skin, the pigmentary system and the melanocytes life cycle and presents a reaction–diffusion model for the simulation of the shape features of human‐pigmented lesions. The simulation of such disorders has many applications in dermatology, for instance, to assist dermatologists in diagnosis and training related to pigmentation disorders. Our study focuses, however, on applications related to computer graphics. Thus, we also present a method to seamless blend the results of our simulation model in images of healthy human skin. In this context, our model contributes to the generation of more realistic skin textures and therefore more realistic human models. In order to assess the quality of our results, we measured and compared the characteristics of the shape of real and synthesized pigmented lesions. We show that synthesized and real lesions have no statistically significant differences in their shape features. Visually, our results also compare favourably with images of real lesions, being virtually indistinguishable from real images.Changes in the human pigmentary system can lead to imbalances in the distribution of melanin in the skin resulting in artefacts known as pigmented lesions. Our work takes as departing point biological data regarding human skin, the pigmentary system and the melanocytes life cycle and presents a reaction‐diffusion model for the simulation of the shape features of human‐pigmented lesions. The simulation of such disorders has many applications in dermatology, for instance, to assist dermatologists in diagnosis and training related to pigmentation disorders. Our study focuses, however, on applications related to computer graphics. Thus, we also present a method to seamless blend the results of our simulation model in images of healthy human skin.