Quantitative analysis of wound healing.

In this article, we initially review several problems associated with the design and interpretation of certain types of experiments currently used to study wound healing, drawing attention to the fact that applications for standard statistical techniques in the analysis of the experimental results are often of limited value. We then argue that, because of the special nature of wound healing data, curve fitting of empirical model equations can often provide a convenient way to summarize treatment effects with large data sets. The various ways in which this technique could be used to facilitate the interpretation of experimental wound healing results are then explored. To illustrate this approach, we then took several wound healing experiments and introduced possible models that could be used, paying particular attention to simple equations with the smallest possible number of parameters. For each equation, the way that the parameters of the model could be interpreted with regard to the biologic effects represented is given. Examples are given to show the application of each model discussed theoretically in the interpretation of some typical experimental data sets.