METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING NATURE OF SKIN DEFECTS AND METHOD OF ASSESSING EFFECT OF COSMETIC AGENT AGAINST SKIN AGEING Russian patent published in 2011 - IPC G06T7/00 G06K9/62 

FIELD: information technology.

SUBSTANCE: apparatus comprises: a) a digital camera (12) which captures at least one digital image (14) of at least one defined zone on the skin (34, 36, 38, 40); said image is defined by a set of pixels which is transmitted to a digital image processing device; b) apparatus for breaking the digital image into three colour planes: red (60), green (70), blue (80), denoted R, G and B respectively, using the said image processing device; c) apparatus for selecting one of these planes (80); d) apparatus for calculating at least one of the following parameters based on the selected plane: -average grey level on the image, -surface area of skin defects on said image, some of which are associated with ageing, such as wrinkles, spots, dark patches, pigmentation defects, flabby and sagging areas on the skin; -mean deviation of the grey level within the set of image pixels as a representative parameter of skin uniformity. Image can have practical application in the method of assessing the effect of a cosmetic agent based on ageing symptoms.

EFFECT: obtaining accurate assessment results while simplifying realisation of the method and the apparatus.

30 cl, 3 dwg, 1 tbl, 3 ex