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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Feb 1.
Published in final edited form as: Ann Biomed Eng. 2013 Sep 10;42(2):280–298. doi: 10.1007/s10439-013-0895-2

Figure 1. Therapeutics must cross barriers at the system (left), tissue (middle) and cellular (right) level.

Figure 1

Imaging can assess the impact of barriers to nanoparticle delivery at each level and facilitate therapeutic optimization to enhance delivery. At the system level, therapeutics must be long circulating and must withstand serum degradation. Within tissues, drugs or carriers must extravasate and be transported to target cells. Finally, cellular internalization and trafficking is required for a subset of therapeutics to reach their target.