# Infrared Skin Imaging to Transform Noninvasive Diagnosis and Management of Skin Disease

> **NIH NIH DP5** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $358,675

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Skin disease affects 1 in 4 Americans and costs $75 billion annually. Diagnosis relies upon visual inspection,
but the subjective nature of visual assessment can lead to death from skin cancer misdiagnosis or suffering
from misdiagnosis of a treatable chronic inflammatory condition. Non-white Americans make up 40% of the
population and face further challenges, because disease can appear more subtly in pigmented skin, leading to
systematic underdiagnosis and undertreatment. Skin biopsy is more objective but not all patients, particularly
children, tolerate invasive procedures, and there are concerns about overutilization and low diagnostic yield of
biopsies. Thus there is an urgent need for objective technologies that can quantitatively assess cutaneous
inflammation and neoplasms across diverse skin types, and that can provide noninvasive alternatives to skin
biopsy. Macroscopic optical imaging modalities may be able to address this need, but mostly depend on
Silicon(Si)-based photodetectors, which constrains what these devices can measure because in the range
where Si-based detectors are most sensitive (400-950 nm), melanin and hemoglobin are the dominant
chromophores, while lipid and water are essentially invisible. With respect to microscopic optical imaging
modalities, reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) provides an alternative to biopsy. However, conventional
RCM is limited to depths of 200-350 µm, and therefore deeper lesion margins may be missed and disease
processes that extend beyond the epidermis are inaccessible. The short wave infrared (SWIR) spectral range
(900-1700 nm) extends beyond the reach of Si-based detectors, and is characterized by increased water and
lipid absorption, and decreased melanin absorption. In recent work we found that noninvasive SWIR imaging
provides high contrast visualization of cutaneous inflammation that can be used to derive quantitative
measures of inflammation that decrease linearly with disease progression. These considerations inform the
central hypothesis that SWIR imaging will support objective assessment of inflammatory and neoplastic skin
diseases regardless of skin pigmentation. In Aim 1 we will develop a macroscopic SWIR imaging modality and
test its ability to assess disease severity in representative chronic inflammatory conditions in patients with
diverse skin types. In Aim 2 we will develop a microscopic SWIR imaging modality and test its ability to surpass
existing optical imaging depth limitations and also to differentiate benign from malignant lesions. These aims
will be achieved through technical expertise in the Shmuylovich lab, with preclinical validation in skin mimicking
phantoms followed by pilot studies in human subjects. This work represents a paradigm shift in cutaneous
imaging whereby novel research-grade infrared imaging will be clinically translated to quantitatively assess
disease across the full spectrum of diverse skin types, and at length scales ra...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10254984
- **Project number:** 1DP5OD031872-01
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Leonid Shmuylovich
- **Activity code:** DP5 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $358,675
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-14 → 2026-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10254984

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10254984, Infrared Skin Imaging to Transform Noninvasive Diagnosis and Management of Skin Disease (1DP5OD031872-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10254984. Licensed CC0.

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