Development of a photographic scale for consistency and guidance in dermatologic assessment of forearm sun damage.

Objectives: To develop a photographic sun damage assessment scale for forearm skin and test its feasibility and utility for consistent classification of sun damage.

Design: For a blinded comparison, 96 standardized 8 × 10 digital photographs of participants' forearms were taken. Photographs were graded by an expert dermatologist using an existing 9-category dermatologic assessment scoring scale until all categories contained photographs representative of each of 4 clinical signs.