PRELIMINARY STUDY ON SPECTRAL CHARACTERISTICS FOR IDENTIFICATION OF SKIN COLOUR UNDER CIRCULATORY DYSFUNCTION USING ARTIFICIAL SKIN SAMPLES (OP43, 303-313)

To assist development of appropriate light sources to diagnose circulatory dysfunction conditions effectively based on the colour appearance of patient's skin under emergency situation in disaster sites, a set of urethane skin model samples have been developed, which simulate visual characteristics of real human skins under different circulatory dysfunction conditions (shocked, healthy, and congested) for young female/male and elderly female/male. Their characteristics have been evaluated by calculations of samples? colour differences under various light spectra compared to those of real skins. Visual evaluation experiments have been conducted using these samples to evaluate distinction between different circulatory dysfunction conditions under the optimized light-emitting diode (LED) light spectra used in our previous study. The developed urethane samples were found better in closeness of colours to real skin than previously-used paper colour charts, but it needs further improvements in matching spectral reflectance characteristics. The experimental method directly comparing perceived colour differences of the samples under the LED lights and reference lights (broadband spectra) was found useful for such evaluation.