An objective method to assess the improvements of skin texture roughness after botulinum toxin type a treatment of crow's feet

BACKGROUND: Photo-numeric scales could lack precision and objectivity on evaluating the improvements on wrinkles after a treatment with botulinum toxin type A. The authors suggest a new digital evaluation method to analyze its effectiveness. OBJECTIVES: This study aims to investigate retrospectively the effect of intramuscular injection of botulinum toxin type A on skin texture in the lateral peri-orbital region with a new objective method. METHODS: Skin texture roughness (STR) in the lateral peri-orbital region is evaluated with a multi-directional light beam by light emitting diodes of different wavelengths (Antera 3D® ), before and after injections of 12 units of botulinum toxin type A. The wrinkles and lines deeper than 0.5 mm are filtered to measure accurately skin texture. RESULTS: We observed an improvement of STR in all cases treated with botulinum toxin type A. A significant decrease of STR was recorded as follows: 17.08% (P < .0001) at 4 weeks and 12.14% at 4 months (P = .001). CONCLUSION: Botulinum toxin type A treatment of crow's feet was able to improve STR. The Antera® device and software are a valuable, objective, easy and reproducible method to assess the effects of the toxin.