Ultrasound in Biomedical Engineering: Ultrasound Microbubble Contrast Agents Promote Transdermal Permeation of Drugs

This report discusses a new development in the use of ultrasound microbubble contrast agents on transdermal drug delivery. The medium surrounding the microbubbles at the optimum concentration from liquid to gel can be modified and it can still achieve the same enhancement for transdermal drug permeation as liquid medium. It was also found that under the same ultrasound power density, microbubbles of larger particle sizes can extend the penetration depths of dye at the phantom surface. (C) 2016, Elsevier Taiwan LLC and the Chinese Taipei Society of Ultrasound in Medicine. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).