Study on laser-Assisted drug delivery with optical coherence tomography

The nail provides a functional protection to the fingertips and surrounding tissue from external injuries. Nail plate divided into three layers including dorsal, intermediate, and ventral layers. The dorsal layer consists of compact, hard keratins, limiting topical drug delivery through the nail. In this study, we investigate the application of fractional CO₂ laser that produces arrays of microthermal ablation zones (MAZs) to facilitate drug delivery in the nails. Moreover, optical coherence tomography (OCT) is implemented for real-Time monitoring of the laser-skin tissue interaction, sparing the patient from invasive surgical sampling procedure. Observations of drug diffusion through the induced MAZ array are achieved by evaluating the time-dependent OCT intensity variance. Subsequently, nails are treated with cream and liquid topical drugs to investigate the feasibility and diffusion efficacy of laser-Assisted drug delivery. Our results show that fractional CO₂ laser improves the efficacy of topical drug delivery in the nail plate, and that OCT could potentially be used for in vivo monitoring of the depth of laser penetration as well as real-Time observations of drug delivery.