Evaluating facial dermis aging in healthy Caucasian females with LC-OCT and deep learning
Open accessAbstract
Recent advancements in high-resolution imaging have significantly improved our understanding of microstructural changes in the skin and their relationship to the aging process. Line Field Confocal Optical Coherence Tomography (LC-OCT) provides detailed 3D insights into various skin layers, including the papillary dermis and its fibrous network. In this study, a deep learning model utilizing a 3D ResNet-18 network was trained to predict chronological age from LC-OCT images of 100 healthy Caucasian female volunteers, aged 20 to 70 years. The AI-based protocol focused on regions of interest delineated between the segmented dermal-epidermal junction and the superficial dermis, exploiting complex patterns within the collagen network for age prediction. The model achieved a mean absolute error of 4.2 years and exhibited a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.937 with actual ages. Furthermore, there was a notable correlation (r = 0.87) between quantified clinical scoring, encompassing parameters such as firmness, elasticity, density, and wrinkle appearance, and the ages predicted by deep learning model. This strong correlation underscores how integrating emerging imaging technologies with deep learning can accelerate aging research and deepen our understanding of how alterations in skin microstructure are related to visible signs of aging.
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Applying tomography and AI to reconstruct 3D epidermal cross-sections to indicate a lesion or an anomalous vascularization is possible.
“the possibility of applying tomography and AI to reconstruct 3D epidermal cross-sections to indicate a lesion [54,55,56] or an anomalous vascularization [57,58].”
From Artificial Intelligence in the Histopathological Assessment of Non-Neoplastic Skin Disorders: A Narrative Review with Future Perspectives (2025) · cites this paper as [55]
The Introduction describes LC-OCT as a 3D skin-imaging tool that supports diagnosis of skin disorders, and Methods (Dermis-epidermis junction detection) describes AI-based segmentation of 3D image stacks. The paper studies healthy skin aging, however, and does not show that its AI reconstruction identifies lesions or anomalous vascularization. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Cites
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Sorted by citations
Della Mura, M., Sorino, J., Colagrande, A., Daruish, M., Ingravallo, G., Massaro, A., Cazzato, G., Lupo, C., Casatta, N., Ribatti, D., et al. (2025) · Medical Sciences · doi:10.3390/medsci13020070 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
- Authors
- Assi, A., Fischman, S., Lopez, C., Pedrazzani, M., Grignon, G., Missodey, R., Korichi, R., Cauchard, J.-H., Ralambondrainy, S., & Bonnier, F.
- Affiliations
- LVMH (France) (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Bonnier, Franck
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2024-10-15
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 24113-24113
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC11480100
- OpenAlex
- W4403436250
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 1
- FWCI
- 5.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Dermatology › Skin Protection and Aging
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Optical Coherence Tomography Applications
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Face recognition and analysis
- Keywords
- facial skin aging, dermis, line-field confocal optical coherence tomography, chronological age estimation, collagen network, basement membrane zone, skin microstructure
- MeSH terms
- Deep Learning, Adult, Aged, Aging, Face, Female, Humans, Middle Aged, Skin Aging, Dermis, Tomography, Optical Coherence, White People, Young Adult, Healthy Volunteers
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