Characterization of the thermalisation efficiency and photostability of photoacoustic contrast agents

A simple method of characterizing organic dyes and nanoparticles used as contrast agents for photoacoustic molecular imaging based on relative photoacoustic measurements is described. By acquiring just two time-resolved photoacoustic signals, one in the sample of interest and the other in water, measurements of the thermalisation efficiency and other parameters relevant to the characterization of contrast agents can be acquired. The method was validated using absorbing solutions of known thermalisation efficiency and Grüneisen coefficient. It was then used to measure the thermalisation efficiency of solutions of gold nanorods, rhodamine B, methylene blue, IR-820, fluorescein and cresyl violet. In addition, photoacoustic measurements of the photostability of these substances were acquired.

[1]  J. Demas,et al.  Measurement of photoluminescence quantum yields. Review , 1971 .

[2]  Konstantin V Sokolov,et al.  Intravascular Photoacoustic Imaging , 2010, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[3]  I. T. Young,et al.  Photobleaching kinetics of fluorescein in quantitative fluorescence microscopy. , 1995, Biophysical journal.

[4]  Manojit Pramanik,et al.  Molecular photoacoustic imaging of angiogenesis with integrin‐targeted gold nanobeacons , 2011, FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

[5]  Younan Xia,et al.  Near-infrared gold nanocages as a new class of tracers for photoacoustic sentinel lymph node mapping on a rat model. , 2009, Nano letters.

[6]  B. Krauskopf,et al.  Proc of SPIE , 2003 .

[7]  V. Zharov,et al.  Golden carbon nanotubes as multimodal photoacoustic and photothermal high-contrast molecular agents. , 2009, Nature nanotechnology.

[8]  T. Omata,et al.  Photobleaching of methylene blue aqueous solution sensitized by composite powders of titanium oxide with SrTiO3, BaTiO3, and CaTiO3 , 2003 .

[9]  Jesse V Jokerst,et al.  Gold nanorods for ovarian cancer detection with photoacoustic imaging and resection guidance via Raman imaging in living mice. , 2012, ACS nano.

[10]  Jan Laufer,et al.  Evaluation of Absorbing Chromophores Used in Tissue Phantoms for Quantitative Photoacoustic Spectroscopy and Imaging , 2010, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[11]  C. Sheng,et al.  Study of Photobleaching Mechanism in Methylene BlueSensitized Gelatin Using a Single Beam UV-Vis.Fibre Optics Spectrophotometer , 2005 .

[12]  David S. Conceição,et al.  Photochemistry and Cytotoxicity Evaluation of Heptamethinecyanine Near Infrared (NIR) Dyes , 2013, International journal of molecular sciences.

[13]  J. Luong,et al.  Fluorescence properties of gold nanorods and their application for DNA biosensing. , 2005, Chemical communications.

[14]  J. Olmsted.  Calorimetric determinations of absolute fluorescence quantum yields , 1979 .

[15]  V. C. Moore,et al.  Band Gap Fluorescence from Individual Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes , 2002, Science.

[16]  E. Eyring,et al.  Fluorescence quantum yield of cresyl violet in methanol and water as a function of concentration , 1992 .

[17]  P. Beard.  Biomedical photoacoustic imaging , 2011, Interface Focus.