3D

Kao corp. is a leading company in the family health product field, continually offering products for cleanliness, beauty, and health with the motto "Toward a clean, beautiful, healthy life every day." Kao’s Biological Science Laboratories are involved in fundamental research on health science and skin and hair science to determine the roots of life phenomenon such as biological processes, and fulfills the role of performing fundamental technical research for developing innovative products with high value. At this laboratory, research and evaluation methods for skin aging prevention, which are also fundamental for cosmetic development using existing and new materials, is being actively promoted under the leadership of Mitsuyuki Hotta, Senior Researcher R&D.

"Interest in anti-aging is increasing, and changes in the skin generated by aging, such as wrinkles or sagging, are major concerns. Especially research for care of under the eyes has become very important. So the establishment of methods to evaluate the morphological change under the eyes was a must." (Yuko Fukuda, Researcher, Biological Science Laboratories)

Ms. Fukuda started such research, but faced difficulties in evaluation under the eyes. Quantitative methods for sag do exist: One type measures the displacement rate of pendulous skin in response to postural change and another type measures sagging skin characteristics such as elasticity and flexibility. "We however considered both these methods inadequate for evaluating sags under eyes. The displacement of eyelid sags is too small to measure by the former method. Many of the latter type are the contact methods, which may cause panelists discomfort and distress if such methods are used for measurement near the eye."

For evaluating the sagging shape under the eyes, Ms. Fukuda first performed score evaluation by creating a photo scale (photo standard) of the initial degree of sagging in 5 levels. It was found that this sagging score increases relatively as age increases. This visual evaluation of under the eyes with the photo scale can describe the rough degree of sagging. But it cannot evaluate slight intraindividual changes, and the evaluation requires a great deal of skill and lacks objectivity. Therefore, 3D image analysis was introduced as a method that can express finer data numerically and detect objective parameters. She adopted the Konica Minolta Non-Contact 3D Digitizer VIVID 900, because it can perform quick, non-contact scanning. Next, she took numerical data about sagging under the eyes of 97 women using VIVID 900, and evaluated their sags with the photo scale at the same time. Then she searched for a numerical parameter that best correlated to the photo scale score.

• Taking of frontal face photograph and 3D image
• Evaluation of sagging score using photograph
• Detection of numerical parameters from 3D image

According to Mayumi Satoh, another researcher in the laboratory, "The VIVID is good because it can be carried around and operated standalone. Since lenses can be changed, you can select the lens with the optimum viewing angle for scanning the face or a selected area such as under the eyes. For cases where high measurement accuracy is required for specific areas, such as under the eyes in our case, the VIVID is suitable because the data has high reliability."

Ms. Fukuda verified the usefulness of the parameter obtained using 3D image analysis, and succeeded in expressing the slight change of the shape in a placebo-controlled test with a sag treatment lotion quantitatively, which was not possible using score evaluation.

Kao’s Biological Science Research Laboratories currently uses two VIVID units, and now that 3D image analysis has become common sense in a variety of research activities, both units are actively used full time. "We are already starting to use them in the smaller-face or thinner-face fields," said Mitsuyuki Hotta (Senior Researcher R&D). And according to Ms. Satoh Mayumi, " In the future, we want to use them not only for face analysis, but also for applications in the thinner-body and body-care fields. I think they might also be useful in the disposable-diaper field."

Such a constant challenge to research provides feedback to familiar products such as Sofina, Kao’s main skin-care brand, and other products, and supports Kao’s continual development of various hit products. Further, as heavy users of VIVID, Kao also raises the level of technical demands for 3D digitizers. "We wish the VIVID was lighter. And it would be even better if it could reproduce individual strands of hair," said Ms. Yuuko Fukuda.