Automatic image quantification for structural analysis of in vitro dermal samples

Abstract

Artificial skin substitutes display similar physical, chemical and histological characteristics as real human skin. This property can be used for in vitro cosmetic product testing, drug discovery as well as toxicity screening in the fields of medicine, development of cosmetic and toxic products, health care and biomedical research. Specifically, to analyze and visualize toxic effects on tissue-engineered skin we have developed a prototypical microscopy-based scanning and anal-ysis system in order to provide more efficient, standardized and reproducible measurements. Within this contribution we will briefly describe the image acquisition approach and focus on the localization, segmentation and classification of his-tologically stained skin samples, with focus on the epidermis. The results obtained from our system are compared to ground truth data. © 2012 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston.