A smartphone application for personalized facial aesthetic monitoring

Methods available at home for capturing facial images to track changes in skin quality and evaluate skincare treatments are limited. In this study, we developed a smartphone camera application (app) for personalized facial aesthetic monitoring.

A face alignment indicators (FAIN) system utilizing facial landmark detection, an artificial intelligence technique, to estimate key facial parts, was implemented into the app to maintain a consistent facial appearance during image capture. The FAIN system is composed of a fixed target indicator and an alignment indicator that dynamically changes its shape according to the user's face position, size, and orientation. Users align their faces to match the alignment indicator with the fixed target indicator, and the image is automatically captured when alignment is achieved.

We investigated the app's effectiveness in ensuring a consistent facial appearance by analyzing both geometric and colorimetric data. Geometric information from captured faces and colorimetric data from stickers applied to the faces were utilized. The coefficients of variation (CVs) for the L*, a*, and b* values of the stickers were higher compared to those measured by a colorimeter, with CVs of 14.9 times, 8.14 times, and 4.41 times for L*, a*, and b*, respectively. To assess the feasibility of the app for facial aesthetic monitoring, we tracked changes in pseudo-skin color on the cheek of a participant using skin-colored stickers. As a result, we observed the smallest color difference ∆Eab of 1.901, which can be considered as the experimentally validated detection limit using images acquired by the app.

While the current monitoring method is a relative quantification approach, it contributes to evidence-based evaluations of skincare treatments.