Light and Skin Interactions

2.3. Light Interactions with Matter

The problem of determining the appearance of an object or an environment involves the simulation of light interactions with matter, which involves three main processes: emission, scattering, and absorption. At the atomic level, these interactions occur between light (photons) and electrons, and they can be reduced to three basic actions: a photon goes from place to place, an electron goes from place to place, and an electron emits or absorbs a photon [86].

2.3.1. Emission

Man made and natural light sources emit light with characteristic spectral distributions, which depend on the nature of the emission process. The processes of light emission can be divided into two types: thermal and luminescent [13, ...