Monday, February 19, 2007

Absorption Coefficient of Skin Melanosomes

The very first step to simulating the skin is to find out the value of absorption coefficent for the different layers of the skin.
This link provides an idea of the calculation of the absorption coefficient of melanosomes in the skin.
http://omlc.ogi.edu/spectra/melanin/mua.html
Further,they have provided a diagram that illustrates the variation of absorption coefficient of melanosomes for different types of skin,i.e. for human skin,guinea pig skin and the retina.
http://omlc.ogi.edu/spectra/melanin/jacques.mcauliffe.gif
There were 2 very broad conclusions I could make from this
1.The average value of absorption coefficient of melanosomes in human skin is
1.7 x 10^12 x [(lambda*)^-3.48]
*lambda is the wavelength of light used
2.The absorption coefficient of Melanosomes decreases with increasing wavelength of light,thus for lower wavelengths,eg.blue,the absorption will be more.
Two points need to be taken very important note of
1.We are only discussing Melanosomes,and not the total skin characteristics in the above case.
2.The units used are cm-1

No comments: