Detecting Temporal Changes in Skin Surrogate Model Using Hyperspectral Imaging

Advancements in biomedical imaging have increasingly explored innovative models for studying human skin conditions. Recent research highlights a biochemical connection between banana peels and human skin, particularly through the enzyme tyrosinase, which plays a key role in pigmentation and oxidative stress. Studies have shown that, much like human skin, banana peels undergo oxidative browning due to tyrosinase activity. Leveraging this similarity, we have developed imaging techniques to track biochemical changes in bananas as a potential surrogate model for the detection of skin changes such as sun spots or melanoma. This paper introduces the application of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) to analyse the spectral properties of banana peels as a method for studying pigmentation disorders and oxidative damage. We present a HSI system designed to capture spectral reflectance characteristics across the 440 nm to 900 nm range, with a hyperspectral cube resolution of 956×952×96. Our approach enables a more targeted spectral assessment by dynamically selecting and investigating specific regions in banana samples over multiple days. Preliminary spectral analysis demonstrates the system’s capability to detect reflectance variations linked to biochemical changes such as ripeness, bruising, and oxidative stress—factors that parallel pigmentation alterations in human skin.

However, direct hyperspectral imaging can be resource intensive, making it less accessible for applications in dermatology and mobile health diagnostics. To address this, we conducted preliminary experiments to reconstruct 27-band hyperspectral representations in the VIS spectrum from RGB images. The observed spectral variations and successful reconstruction results confirm the potential of HSI for capturing biochemical changes and provide a foundation for future biomedical imaging research, particularly in melanoma detection and dermatology-related applications.