Responses from a normal skin and a malignant human skin subjected to a low power short-pulse laser are studied. Temporal variations of transmittance and reflectance that carry the signature of the skin conditions are analyzed. The normal skin is modeled based on the anatomical details available in the literature. The malignant skin represents commonly found skin lesions, viz., non-melanoma and cutaneous melanoma. Optical properties of the skin such as the absorption and the scattering coefficients cover various lesions, and they are within the therapeutic optical window of 600-1300 nm wavelength. Scattering is modeled using Henyey-Greenstein phase function. The transient radiative heat transfer equation is solved using the modified discrete ordinate method. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.