Photobleaching as a method of increasing the accuracy in measuring carotenoid concentration in human skin by Raman spectroscopy

Abstract

It was shown experimentally that the effect of photobleaching in noninvasive measurement of the Raman spectra of light used in determining the carotenoid concentration in human skin can be used to increase measurement accuracy. Increased accuracy occurs as a consequence of a decrease in the measurable Raman spectra of the wideband fluorescent background intensity when a sample is irradiated by laser radiation. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that, for the spectra of skin from nine volunteers, the fluorescent background intensity can be decreased on average by a factor of 1.4, which leads to an increase in the signal-to-noise ratio for Raman lines of skin carotenoids by a factor of 1.2 on average. The kinetics of photobleaching of humans can be described by biexponential decay with a correlation coefficient close to unity, which agrees with the presented theoretical calculations.