High Frequency Ultrasound to Assess Facial Skin Thickness with Gender, Age and BMI in Healthy Adults

Abstract Background With the high frequency of ultrasonic instruments, high frequency ultrasound plays a more and more important role in normal skin measurement, skin disease diagnosis and cosmetic medicine. The study aimed to estimate the skin epidermis and dermis thickness on eight different sites of the face in healthy adults with high frequency ultrasound, and evaluate the correlation with age and BMI. Methods In this study, we performed a facial skin ultrasound on 118 volunteers using high frequency ultrasound. Their epidermis and dermis thickness of forehead, glabella, temple, eyelid, nasal dorsum, zygoma, submaxilla and neck were measured. The correlation of the epidermis and dermis thickness with age and BMI was analyzed by linear correlation analysis. Results The epidermis and dermis thickness in males were statistically significantly higher than female (P༜0.05), except the thickness of zygomatic epidermis and neck dermis. The dermis thickness on zygoma and submaxilla of female in young age group was statistically higher than middle age and old group respectively (P༜0.05). Overall, with the increase of age, the thickness of female facial skin decreased, mainly in the forehead, glabella, zygoma and submaxill dermis thickness. In females, the epidermis and the dermis thickness of neck were correlated with BMI (r = 0.392, 0.241, P༜0.05, respectively). However, in males, the epidermis and dermis thickness was correlated with age only in zygoma dermis (r=-0.327, P༜0.05), while there was no correlation between the epidermis and dermis thickness and BMI. Conclusions Gender, age and BMI had significant effect on the epidermis and dermis thickness on different sites of the face.