ABSTRACT
Beta-carotene is the essential source of vitamin A and visual pigments for most people. It is also useful for normal redox and immunological activity in our bodies. Some studies have shown that the mean beta-carotene content in healthy subjects is significantly higher than that in skin cancer subjects. Carotenoids also play a key role in the prevention of many oxidative stress–mediated degenerative diseases, such as neurological disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, and immunity diseases. Therefore, dermal beta-carotene concentration can be a good indicator of physical health. Recently, optical clearing (OC) methods have been applied to measure dermal beta-carotene using noninvasive diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. Optical clearing methods can provide an opportunity to detect dermal beta-carotene hidden by the absorption spectrum of blood, bilirubin, melanin, and water. Here, the detection of dermal beta-carotene using multimodal OC methods, including optical clearing agents (OCA), compression, and computational OC, is investigated. Using OC methods makes available a low-cost and portable system for screening the concentration of chromophores such as melanin and carotenoid molecules for nutrition or oncological studies.
