Vitiligo is a depigmentary disease characterized by melanocyte loss attributed most commonly to autoimmune mechanisms. Currently vitiligo has a high incidence (1% worldwide) but a poor set of treatment options. Piperine, a compound found in black pepper, is a potential treatment for the depigmentary skin disease vitiligo, due to its ability to stimulate mouse epidermal melanocyte proliferation in vitro and in vivo. The present study investigates the use of multispectral imaging and an image processing technique based on local contrast to quantify the stimulatory effects of piperine on human melanocyte proliferation in reconstructed epidermis. We demonstrate the ability of the imaging method to quantify increased pigmentation in response to piperine treatment. The quantization of melanocyte stimulation by the proposed imaging technique illustrates the potential use of this technology to quickly assess therapeutic responses of vitiligo tissue culture models to treatment non-invasively.

Date Published: 17 February 2011
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 7883, Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics VII, 788309 (17 February 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.875620

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7883:
Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics VII
Kenton W. Gregory M.D.; Nikiforos Kollias; Andreas Mandelis; Henry Hirschberg M.D.; Hyun Wook Kang; Anita Mahadevan-Jansen; Brian Jet-Fei Wong M.D.; Justus F. R. Ilgner M.D.; Bodo E. Knudsen M.D.; E. Duco Jansen; Steen J. Madsen; Guillermo J. Tearney; Bernard Choi; Haishan Zeng; Laura Marcu, Editor(s)