US Patent 9390312 Systems, methods, and devices for assessing microbiota of skin

Devices, systems, and methods for assessing microbiota of skin are described which include: a skin-covering material with an inner surface conforming in shape to a topography of a skin surface and including a microbe-capture region; an image-capture device to capture a least one image of the inner surface of the skin-covering material and to transform the captured at least one image into a digital output including information associated with at least one property and a spatial distribution of at least one type of microbe bound to the microbe-capture region; and a computing device including circuitry configured to receive the digital output from the image-capture device, compare the at least one property of the at least one type of microbe with a database of reference microbe properties, and generate a digital profile including the at least one property and the spatial distribution of the at least one type of microbe bound to the microbe-capture region of the skin-covering material.