Quantifying moisturizing effects of your ranges with the C-Cube by Pixience

11 July 2024

Quantify moisturizing effects of your ranges with the C-Cube

Skin hydration is an essential process for maintaining skin health and beauty. It is known that the skin plays a crucial role in protecting against external aggressions, it can perform this role properly if it has optimal hydration.

Moisturizing the skin contributes to its suppleness, elasticity and firmness. A good level of hydration prevents excessive flaking, premature wrinkles and irritation. Moisturizing dermocosmetic products are therefore formulated to strengthen the skin’s hydrolipidic barrier.

With the C-Cube, Pixience provides you with a complete and versatile tool to perform a wide range of measurements and prove your products claims. It is the most accurate tool on the market with an accuracy of 0.1%.

With its advanced quantification and analysis capabilities, learn how the C-Cube can assess skin hydration.

Study of desquamation: in-vivo and ex-vivo

Dry skin can manifest as visible peeling, which is a flaking of the stratum corneum. This phenomenon can be due to a medical condition (eczema, psoriasis) or lifestyle (use of hot water, poor diet, use of products containing alcohol).

The C-Cube makes it possible to quantify desquamation directly on the skin or ex-vivo via patches and thanks to the Pixience sample reader.

In-vivo

Skin scales are usually whitish and become visible when they are significantly lighter than healthy, well-hydrated skin. Thanks to its patented illumination and a specific color calibration process, the C-Cube converts the pixels in the image into CIE L*a*b* measurements. We thus exploit the L* component to locate brighter or white pixels, i.e. the detected dander. We produce a binary image in black and white and the area covered by the desquamation index in relation to the full surface.

Ex-vivo

D-Squame® or Corneofix® patches are used to remove scales from the surface of the skin in a standardized way. In order to analyze the samples, simply position the C-Cube in the Pixience collection reader.

For analysis, the index is calculated in the same way as in in-vivo, thanks to the difference in color between the bottom of the patch and the scales. This analysis also makes it possible to obtain a division into 5 categories according to the thickness of the scales.

Roughness study

Roughness of the skin is often a sign of dry skin, caused by the loss of water and lipids. When the skin is dry, the cohesion of dead surface cells is altered, leading to excessive flaking and uneven texture. The skin becomes less elastic, forming micro-cracks and crevices that increase roughness.

The C-Cube uses the stereophotometric technique and estimates surface normals. The software then uses these normals along with a geometric calibration to give elevation information for each pixel. The roughness parameters Sa, Sq and Sdr are then measured.

Symmetry and sharpness measurement

Skin symmetry and sharpness are common indicators for assessing skin shine and hydration.

Thanks to its ability to perform 3D measurements, it is possible to measure the parameters of symmetry (Ssk) and sharpness (Sku). Ssk is the degree of inclination and expresses the symmetry of peaks and valleys around the average surface as the center. Sku determines the sharpness of a surface and expresses the pointing of the height distribution.

Skin Radiance measurement

Skin radiance is generally perceived as a change in tone associated with notions of clarity of complexion, a rosy or even complexion and healthy skin. Hydration has a direct effect on this parameter by changing the way the skin interacts with the measurement bias.

We have an exclusive radiance index to express the percentage change in lightness, redness and overall homogeneity. These three criteria are easily extracted from a calibrated image and combined in such a way that the index value increases with the visual impression of brilliance. The higher the percentage, the more radiant the skin.

Hydration is one of the most prominent claims in cosmetics. This is why the C-Cube can quantify this effect in multiple ways. This tool, accurate to 0.1% and versatile, accompanies you in your clinical studies to show the effectiveness of your products.

The C-Cube 3 and its software, the ultimate tandem of performance and versatility!