Premium
Precise Deciphering of Brain Vasculatures and Microscopic Tumors with Dual NIR‐II Fluorescence and Photoacoustic Imaging
Author(s) -
Guo Bing,
Feng Zhe,
Hu Dehong,
Xu Shidang,
Middha Eshu,
Pan Yutong,
Liu Chengbo,
Zheng Hairong,
Qian Jun,
Sheng Zonghai,
Liu Bin
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
advanced materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.707
H-Index - 527
eISSN - 1521-4095
pISSN - 0935-9648
DOI - 10.1002/adma.201902504
Subject(s) - materials science , photoacoustic imaging in biomedicine , biomedical engineering , fluorescence , fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy , nanoparticle , nanotechnology , optics , medicine , physics
Diagnostics of cerebrovascular structures and microscopic tumors with intact blood–brain barrier (BBB) significantly contributes to timely treatment of patients bearing neurological diseases. Dual NIR‐II fluorescence and photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is expected to offer powerful strength, including good spatiotemporal resolution, deep penetration, and large signal‐to‐background ratio (SBR) for precise brain diagnostics. Herein, biocompatible and photostable conjugated polymer nanoparticles (CP NPs) are reported for dual‐modality brain imaging in the NIR‐II window. Uniform CP NPs with a size of 50 nm are fabricated from microfluidics devices, which show an emission peak at 1156 nm with a large absorptivity of 35.2 L g −1 cm −1 at 1000 nm. The NIR‐II fluorescence imaging resolves hemodynamics and cerebral vasculatures with a spatial resolution of 23 µm at a depth of 600 µm. The NIR‐II PAI enables successful noninvasive mapping of deep microscopic brain tumors (<2 mm at a depth of 2.4 mm beneath dense skull and scalp) with an SBR of 7.2 after focused ultrasound‐induced BBB opening. This study demonstrates that CP NPs are promising contrast agents for brain diagnostics.