A machine learning approach to predict in vivo skin growth

Since their invention, tissue expanders, which are designed to trigger additional skin growth, have revolutionised many reconstructive surgeries. Currently, however, the sole quantitative method to assess skin growth requires skin excision. Thus, in the context of patient outcomes, a machine learning method which uses non-invasive measurements to predict in vivo skin growth and other skin properties, holds significant value. In this study, the finite element method was used to simulate a typical skin expansion protocol and to perform various simulated wave propagation experiments during the first few days of expansion on 1,000 individual virtual subjects. An artificial neural network trained on this dataset was shown to be capable of predicting the future skin growth at 7 days (avg. R² = 0.9353) as well as the subject-specific shear modulus (R² = 0.9801), growth rate (R² = 0.8649), and natural pre-stretch (R² = 0.9783) with a very high degree of accuracy. The method presented here has implications for the real-time prediction of patient-specific skin expansion outcomes and could facilitate the development of patient-specific protocols.