Structural analysis of human Stratum corneum lamellar structure

Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) is a powerful technique able to provide a signal characteristic of the lamellar intercellular lipid matrix of the Stratum Corneum (SC). Compared to Electronic microscopy (EM), SAXS requires a simple sample preparation and provides global information of the lamellar structures within the SC, while EM is restricted to mostly local analysis. The main obstacle to use this technique lies in the interpretation of the diffraction signal, resulting in the under exploitation of the data.

To tackle this obstacle and overall improve the analysis of the lamellar intercellular lipid matrix of the SC we present a new method to analyze the SAXS signal based on computational simulation of an experimental signal. The simulation of a SC SAXS signal is achieved by using a set of unidimensional density profile models coupled with a refinement algorithm based in a stochastic global optimization technique.