Immersion optical clearing of the human skin: in vivo studies

Summary form only given. Controlling of skin optical properties related to the immersion of refractive indices of scatterers (keratinocytes components in epidermis, collagen and elastin fibers in dermis) and ground matter is a key technique for structural and functional imaging. For in vivo studies of clearing of the human skin two optical techniques were used: reflectance spectroscopy and OCT. The intra dermis injection of 40% glucose was applied as the immersion procedure. Based on our proposed skin clearing model, we suggest that the main contribution to clearing in the first stage (first hour) is due to the refractive index matching between collagen fibrils of the dermis (n = 1.46) and the interstitial space (initially n = 1.36) to which glucose (n = 1.39) diffuses.