Progress of lanthanide-doping upconversion nanoparticles in multimodal and multiscale imaging / 中华核医学与分子影像杂志

ABSTRACT

With the rapid development of biomedicine and molecular imaging, multimodal and multiscale imaging have gradually become one of the mainstreams in biomedical imaging. It can provide one or multiple imaging contrast including optical, ultrasonic, photoacoustic, magnetic and radionuclide characteristics, and create multiscale images of living organism ranging from single molecules, cells, tissues and living animals. Therefore, multifunctional contrast agents for multimodal and multiscale imaging have been designed and developed. Lanthanide-doping upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) are a novel type of phosphor that can convert low-energy near-infrared photons into a high-energy one, which are located in the ultraviolet, visible or near-infrared region. UCNPs provide a new platform for the development of multimodal contrast agents and have been widely used in the field of multimodal imaging. In this review, recent progress of lanthanide-doping UCNPs in multimodal and multiscale imaging is summarized.