Seeing is believing--visualizing drug delivery in vitro and in vivo.

Illustrations have always been essential in spreading new scientific and medical ideas. The extraordinary progress of spectroscopic and imaging methods allows the visualization of the performance of drug delivery systems under both in vitro and in vivo conditions. Detailed and quantitative information about the location and concentration of the drug and carrier can be obtained as a function of time, thereby enabling a more profound understanding of biological effects. This information is crucial to the design of optimized drug delivery systems. This issue of ADDR features novel, non-radioactive methods potentially useful for drug delivery scientists in selecting the most appropriate imaging techniques for solving the drug delivery problem at hand.