Introduction: The lips are of significant interest among the facial features for self-perception and social interactions. Such perceptions could rely in part upon the contrast in color between the lips and the surrounding skin. In contrast to skin color, lip color ethnic diversity measurement provides a challenge and is less documented in the literature, most likely due primarily to challenges in measurement based upon the lip characteristics of size and contour. Accurate measurement and reproduction of lip color are essential to build strong cross-sectional knowledge about lip color.

Objective: This preliminary experiment of a large-scale project on lip and skin color was designed to assess accuracy in lip color measurement and recommend instruments and protocols for good measurement practice.

Methods: The study involved 19 healthy French Caucasian women. Their inferior and superior natural lip color was measured twice with three devices in order to extract the standard colorimetric parameters of lightness (L*), chroma (C*), and hue (h): the VISIA-CR® (high-resolution digital camera, Canfield Scientific Inc.); the spectrophotometer VS3200 (45°:0° spectrophotometer, MetaVue™ VS3200, X-Rite Inc.); and the SpectraFace® (new hyperspectral imaging system, Newtone Technologies). The intercomparison and color distribution between the different instruments and the measurement repeatability of each one were assessed.

Results: Our results showed a reliable and equivalent repeatability for the three tested instruments. Moreover, the three tools led to the same conclusion regarding lip color heterogeneity (lighter, redder, less yellow and more saturated inferior lip versus superior lip). Agreement between the SpectraFace® and the spectrophotometer measurements was higher, and the SpectraFace® allowed to identify three separated lip color typologies.

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CONTACT

Solène Trevisan

Clinical Image Analysis Pole Manager

strevisan@newtone.fr

www.newtone.fr