ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we concisely address these modeling efforts from a practical perspective. We start with an outline of relevant radiometric concepts related to the measurement of appearance of skin specimens, followed by an overview of the different approaches normally used to simulate light propagation and absorption within skin multilayer modeling frameworks. We then discuss predictability and reproducibility guidelines that should be followed so that skin appearance models can be effectively employed in interdisciplinary investigations and applications that involve the high fidelity simulation of skin color and translucency. During this discussion, we briefly examine a biophysically based spectral model of light interaction with human skin (BioSpec [1]) that has been employed in different application domains, from realistic image synthesis [2] to biomedical optics [3] and pattern recognition [4]. This particular case study is used to illustrate issues related to model development and evaluation procedures, as well as current trends involving the reproducibility of model predictions and code transparency. We close the chapter with an outlook on open research avenues that can lead to future advances in the predictive modeling of skin appearance attributes.
