Development of Coherent Raman
Scattering Microscopy for Monitoring
Drug Delivery

Abstract

Topical pharmaceuticals are a vitally important part of modern medicine. Currently,
characterising the dermatopharmacokinetics of these drugs is very difficult, and not
possible in either real-time, or with a high level of accuracy. This thesis applies three
coherent Raman scattering microscopy techniques to the challenge of video-rate
monitoring of a porcine skin model undergoing penetration by two different, widely used,
pharmaceuticals. It was found that the data taken during these time-course experiments
could be used in conjunction with a Beer-Lambert expression, and Fick’s second law, to
extract valuable permeation data – namely the skin-solute partition coefficient, and
diffusion coefficient – of these pharmaceuticals.