The present invention relates to a device and a corresponding method for skin detection. To enable a reliable accurate and fast detection the proposed device comprises an illumination unit (10) for projecting a predetermined illumination pattern onto a scene an imaging unit (12) for acquiring an image of the scene and an evaluation unit (14) for evaluating the acquired image by analyzing the imaged illumination pattern as reproduced in the image and for detecting skin areas within the image and distinguishing them from non skin areas within the image based on said analysis.
