4D confocal microscopy method for drug localization in the skin

A 4D confocal microscopy (xyz lambda) method for measuring the drug distribution in skin samples after a permeation study is investigated. This approach can be applied to compare different drug carrier systems in pharmaceutical research studies. For the development of this detection scheme phantom permeation studies and preliminary skin measurements are carried out. The phantom studies are used to detect the permeation depth and the localization of the external applied fluorescent dye naphthofluorescein that is used as a model agent. The skin study shows the feasibility of the method for real tissue. For the differentiation of tissue/phantom and the dye, spectral unmixing is performed using the spectral information detected by a confocal microscope. The results show that it is possible to identify and localize external dyes in the phantoms as well as in the skin samples.