Artificial human skin is available commercially or can be grown in the laboratory from established cell lines. Standard microscopy techniques show that artificial human skin has a fully developed basement membrane that separates an epidermis with the corneal, granular, spinosal, and basal layers from a dermis consisting of fibroblasts in an extracellular matrix. In this chapter, we show how modeling can integrate microscopy data to obtain a better understanding of the development and aging of artificial human skin. We use the time-dependent structural information predicted by our model to show how irradiation with an electron beam at different times in the life of artificial human skin affects the amount of energy deposited in different layers of the tissue. Experimental studies of this type will enable a better understanding of how different cell types in human skin contribute to overall tissue response to ionizing radiation.
Part of the book: Microscopy and Analysis