Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy of Human Skin Using a Commercial Fiber Optic Spectrometer

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is a reliable and easy to implement technique in human tissue characterization. In this work we evaluate the performance of the commercial USB4000 miniature fiber optic spectrometer in the in‐vivo measurement of the diffuse reflectance spectra of different healthy skin sites and lesions in a population of 54 volunteers. Results show, that this spectrometer reproduces well the typical signatures of skin spectra over the 400–1000 nm region. Remarkable spectral differences exist between lesions and normal surrounding skin. A diffusion‐based model was used to simulate reflectance spectra collected by the optical probe of the system.