Predictors of Female Age, Health and Attractiveness Perception from Skin Feature Analysis of Digital Portraits in Five Ethnic Groups via Wiley Online Library

Objective: Research indicates the impact of skin colour, tone evenness and sur-face topography on ratings of age, health and attractiveness in women. In addi-tion to subjective assessments, these effects have been quantified with objective measures derived from skin image analysis.

Signs of skin ageing may manifest differently across ethnic groups. However, comparisons have been limited to re-search with two ethnic groups, preventing conclusions about an ethnicity- specific ranking of skin ageing signs.

Methods: We report results from a multi- ethnic and multi- centre study in which faces of women (n= 180; aged 20– 69 years) from five ethnic groups were imaged.

Facial images were rated for age, health and attractiveness by members of the same ethnic group (each n= 120). Digital image analysis was used to quantify skin colour, gloss, tone evenness and wrinkling/sagging.

We assessed associations between face ratings and skin image measurements in the total sample (i.e. all ethnic groups) and separately by ethnicity.

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