A Biophysically-Based Spectral Model of Light Interaction with Human Skin

Despite the notable progress in physically-based rendering, there is still a long way to go before we can automatically generate predictable images of biological materials. In this paper, we address an open problem in this area, namely the spectral simulation of light interaction with human skin. We propose a novel biophysicallybased model that accounts for all components of light propagation in skin tissues, namely surface reflectance, subsurface reflectance and transmittance, and the biological mechanisms of light absorption by pigments in these tissues. The model is controlled by biologically meaningful parameters, and its formulation, based on standard Monte Carlo techniques, enables its straightforward incorporation into realistic image synthesis frameworks. Besides its biophysically-based nature, the key difference between the proposed model and the existing skin models is its comprehensiveness, i.e., it computes both spectral (reflectance and transmittance) and scattering (bidi...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2004
• Where: CGF
• Authors: Aravind Krishnaswamy, Gladimir V. G. Baranoski
• Keywords: CGF 2004, Image Synthesis, Model, Spectral Simulation