Issues in drug delivery: concepts and practice.

Understanding the transport and deposition of inhaled aerosols is of fundamental importance to inhalation therapy. Herein we address issues that affect drug delivery from experimental and theoretical perspectives. Accordingly, we shall limit our comments to a focused review of laboratory work (ie, an in vitro perspective) and the development of a computer-based 3-dimensional (3D) oral morphology with related computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and particle deposition studies (ie, an "in silico" perspective).

Computer reconstruction of a human lung boundary model from magnetic resonance images.

A mathematical description of the morphology of the lung is necessary for modeling and analyzing the deposition of inhaled aerosols A model of the lung boundary was generated from magnetic resonance images, with the goal of creating a framework for anatomically realistic morphological models of the human airway network. We used data visualization and analysis software to reconstruct the lung volume from a series of transverse magnetic resonance images collected at many vertical locations in the lung, ranging from apex to base. The lung model was then built using isosurface extraction techniques.