Human skin color simulator using active illumination

Abstract

Skin color simulation is one of the most important topics. We propose a novel method to reproduce realistic skin color under different conditions by projecting active illumination to a real human skin surface. The active illumination is generated by a programmable light source, which can emit illuminant in high speed with any spectral distribution. The spectral reflectances of human skin with different concentrations of pigments in the skin are estimated based on the Kubelka-Munk theory. Then, the appearance of the skin surface under arbitrary illuminant is displayed by projecting the programmed light onto a real human skin surface. The experimental results show the feasibility of the proposed method. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.