Broadband absorbing semiconducting polymer nanoparticles for photoacoustic imaging in second near-infrared window

Yuyan Jiang, Paul Kumar Upputuri, Chen Xie, Yan Lyu, Lulu Zhang, Qihua Xiong, Manojit Pramanik, Kanyi Pu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

365 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging holds great promise for preclinical research and clinical practice. However, most studies rely on the laser wavelength in the first near-infrared (NIR) window (NIR-I, 650-950 nm), while few studies have been exploited in the second NIR window (NIR-II, 1000-1700 nm), mainly due to the lack of NIR-II absorbing contrast agents. We herein report the synthesis of a broadband absorbing PA contrast agent based on semiconducting polymer nanoparticles (SPN-II) and apply it for PA imaging in NIR-II window. SPN-II can absorb in both NIR-I and NIR-II regions, providing the feasibility to directly compare PA imaging at 750 nm with that at 1064 nm. Because of the weaker background PA signals from biological tissues in NIR-II window, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of SPN-II resulted PA images at 1064 nm can be 1.4-times higher than that at 750 nm when comparing at the imaging depth of 3 cm. The proof-of-concept application of NIR-II PA imaging is demonstrated in in vivo imaging of brain vasculature in living rats, which showed 1.5-times higher SNR as compared with NIR-I PA imaging. Our study not only introduces the first broadband absorbing organic contrast agent that is applicable for PA imaging in both NIR-I and NIR-II windows but also reveals the advantages of NIR-II over NIR-I in PA imaging.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4964-4969
Number of pages6
JournalNano Letters
Volume17
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 9 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Chemical Society.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Bioengineering
  • General Chemistry
  • General Materials Science
  • Condensed Matter Physics
  • Mechanical Engineering

Keywords

  • brain imaging
  • photoacoustic imaging
  • Polymer nanoparticles
  • second near-infrared window

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