A comparative study of physical, chemical, and combined enhancement of transdermal transport of optical clearing agents (OCAs) is presented. As a physical enhancer of diffusivity, ultrasound (US) with a frequency 1 MHz and a power 1.1 W in the continuous mode was used, and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) was used as a chemical enhancer. OCA (glycerol and polyethylene glycol-400 in equal proportion) was topically applied to the rat skin in vivo as alone or as together with the enhancers. Monitoring of skin optical clearing was implemented using an optical coherence tomography. The results have shown that the attenuation coefficient of ...

Morphological changes of the adipose tissue at phototreatment are studied in vitro using optical coherence tomography. The 200 to 600 μ m fat tissue slices are used in the experiments. The observed change in the tissue structure was associated with fat cell lipolysis and destruction caused by the photodynamic effect. It is found that overall heating of a sample from room to physiological temperature leads to deeper and faster morphology tissue changes if other processing conditions are kept constant. These data support the hypothesis that photodynamic/photothermal treatment induces fat cell lipolysis during some period after treatment.

This handbook deals with laser and coherent-domain methods as applied to biomedical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and materials inspection. It is a second edition of the two-volume Handbook of Coherent-Domain Optical Methods for Biomedical Diagnostics, Environmental and Material Science published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2004. The appearance of this book was stimulated by the recent rapid progress in novel photonics technologies on the basis of diode lasers, broadband femtosecond lasers (Ti: Sapphire or Cr: F€orsterite), light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and superluminescence diodes (SLDs). Such technologies are applicable in many fields, namely, biomedical, environmental, and material diagnostics and monitoring. The main ...

Imaging methods such as optical coherence tomography (OCT), confocal reflectance/ fluorescence microscopy, second-harmonic generation microscopy, and 2-photon microscopy are limited by the optical scattering properties of the skin to superficial depths. Optical clearing technique using high refractive index and hyperosmolarity agents can reduce the scattering of biological tissues. With this approach, better optical imaging depth and contrast have been presented and deeper optical treatment has been achieved. However, noninvasive optical clearing of skin in vivo is difficult, because the outermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum, presents a significant barrier to topically applied OCAs. In this work, OCT imaging ...

The delivery of gold nanoparticles (nanocages coated with a layer of silicon dioxide (40/20 nm)) dispersed in the solution (glycerol + polyethylene glycol-400, 1 : 1) into the skin tissue is studied experimentally in vivo. From the data of optical coherence tomography and histochemical analysis it follows that simple application of suspension of nanoparticles is not efficient enough for delivery of the particles into the skin as a result of passive diffusion. It is shown that fractional laser microablation of skin before the application of the suspension, followed by the topical treatment by ultrasound allows penetration through the epidermis layer and ...

The possibility of visualising the distribution of gold nanoparticles in liver by means of the method of optical coherence tomography is studied experimentally in model samples of beef liver in vitro and rat liver ex vivo. In the experiments we used the gold nanoparticles in the form of nanocages with resonance absorption in the near-IR spectral region. In the model studies the suspension of nanoparticles was applied to the surface of the sample, which then was treated with ultrasound. In the ex vivo studies the suspension of nanoparticles was injected to the laboratory rats intravenously. The image contrast and the ...

The strong optical scattering of skin tissue makes it very difficult for optical coherence tomography (OCT) to achieve deep imaging in skin. Significant optical clearing of in vivo rat skin sites was achieved within 15 min by topical application of an optical clearing agent PEG-400, a chemical enhancer (thiazone or propanediol), and physical massage. Only when all three components were applied together could a 15 min treatment achieve a three fold increase in the OCT reflectance from a 300 μm depth and 31% enhancement in image depth Zthreshold.

Atherosclerosis is the most common underlying cause of vascular disease, occurring in multiple arterial beds including the carotid, coronary, and femoral arteries. Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory process occurring in arterial tissue, involving the subintimal accumulation of low-density lipoproteins (LDL). Little is known about the rates at which these accumulations occur. Measurements of the permeability rate of LDL, and other lipoproteins such as high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL), could help gain a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the development of atherosclerotic lesions. The permeation of VLDL, LDL, HDL, and glucose was monitored and quantified in normal ...

Time variation of the adipose tissue refractive index under photodynamic treatment was studied using OCT. Fat tissue slices 200-500 μm thick were used in in vitro experiments. To stain the fat tissue we used water-ethanol solutions of indocyanine green (ICG) and brilliant green (BG) with the concentration 1 mg/ml and 6 mg/ml, respectively. The CW laser diode (VD-VII DPSS, 808 nm) and the dental diode irradiator Ultra Lume Led 5 (442 and 597 nm) were used for irradiation of tissue slices. The irradiation time was 5 min for the laser and 15 min for the diode lamp. The ...