Validation of artificial skin equivalents as in vitro testing systems
2011
With the increasing complexity of the chemical composition of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and everyday substances, the
awareness of potential health issues and long term damages for humanoid organs is shifting into focus. Artificial in vitro
testing systems play an important role in providing reliable test conditions and replacing precarious animal testing.
Especially artificial skin equivalents ASEs are used for a broad spectrum of studies like penetration, irritation and
corrosion of substances. One major challenge in tissue engineering is the qualification of each individual ASE as in vitro
testing system. Due to biological fluctuations, the stratum corneum hornified layer of some ASEs may not fully develop
or other defects might occur. For monitoring these effects we developed an fully automated Optical Coherence
Tomography device. Here, we present different methods to characterize and evaluate the quality of the ASEs based on
image and data processing of OCT B-scans. By analysing the surface structure, defects, like cuts or tears, are detectable.
A further indicator for the quality of the ASE is the morphology of the tissue. This allows to determine if the skin model
has reached the final growth state. We found, that OCT is a well suited technology for automatically characterizing
artificial skin equivalents and validating the application as testing system.
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