Challenges in the Modeling of Wound Healing Mechanisms in Soft Biological Tissues

Numerical models have become one of the most powerful tools in biomechanics and mechanobiology allowing highly detailed simulations. One of the fields in which they have broadly evolved during the last years is in soft tissue modeling. Particularly, wound healing in the skin is one of the processes that has been approached by computational models due to the difficulty of performing experimental investigations. During the last decades wound healing simulations have evolved from numerical models which considered only a few number of variables and simple geometries to more complex approximations that take into account a higher number of factors and reproduce more realistic geometries. Moreover, thanks to improved experimental observations, a larger number of processes, such as cellular stress generation or vascular growth, that take place during wound healing have been identified and modeled. This work presents a review of the most relevant wound healing approximations, together with an identification of the most relevant criteria that can be used to classify them. In addition, and looking towards the actual state of the art in the field, some future directions, challenges and improvements are analyzed for future developments.