Facile Preparation of a Hybrid Nanoprobe for Triple-Modality Optical/PET/MR Imaging
✍ Scribed by Jeong Chan Park; Mi Kyung Yu; Gwang Il An; Se-Il Park; Jungmin Oh; Hong Joo Kim; Joo-Hyun Kim; Eun Kyung Wang; Il-Hwa Hong; Yeong Su Ha; Tae Hyun Choi; Kyu-Shik Jeong; Yongmin Chang; Michael J. Welch; Sangyong Jon; Jeongsoo Yoo
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 820 KB
- Volume
- 6
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1613-6810
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✦ Synopsis
Multimodality imaging has become an important diagnosis tool during the past decade in basic biomedical research and clinical studies. [ 1 ] Despite the current availability of several imaging modalities such as optical, X-ray, nuclear, magnetic resonance (MR), and ultrasound imaging, they cannot provide all the information needed for elucidating complicated biological events in living systems. Each imaging modality has its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of sensitivity, time and spatial resolution, tissue penetration, quantifi cation, instrument cost, availability, radiation exposure, and functional information. Therefore, the combination of two or more imaging modalities should offer the combined advantages of each while compensating for the weak points of each modality. [ 2 ] Among the various multimodality imaging agents that have been developed in this context to date, hybrid probes for optical/nuclear, [ 3 ] optical/MR, [ 4 , 5 ] and nuclear/MR [ 6 , 7 ] dual imaging probes have attracted special interest because of the high degree of complementarity among these three optical/ nuclear/MR imaging modalities. [ 8 ] Optical imaging techniques such as fl uorescence and bioluminescence imaging can be obtained in short scanning time ( < 1 min) with high sensitivity using relatively cheap imaging instruments, but they suffer from a low tissue penetration problem leading to poor quantifi cation and from restrictions allowing only the imaging of small animals. Nuclear imaging such as positron emission tomography (PET) has the advantages of high sensitivity and accurate quantifi cation, even for humans, but its spatial resolution is poor, being limited to the range of several millimeters. On the other hand, MR imaging (MRI) can provide excellent anatomical information in the sub-millimeter range, especially for soft tissue, but its sensitivity is far inferior to that of optical and nuclear imaging. Both nuclear imaging and MRI provide 3D tomographic images for clinical use, but the expense of these imaging scanners has limited their access for basic researchers.
Therefore, the development of an optical/PET/MR imaging probe promises numerous benefi ts. Using a single hybrid probe, the biological events of interest can be quickly screened with high sensitivity using an easily accessible optical imaging instrument, so that subsequently, only the selected subjects are subjected to PET and MR imaging for further accurate visualization of injected probes supported by detailed 3D anatomical information. In many cases, however, integrating individual imaging probes into a single hybrid system to achieve such multimodality necessitates a multistep synthesis and purifi cation process, which often results in signifi cant loss of optical, PET, and MR signals. This explains why only a few examples of triple-modality imaging probes have been reported so far; [ 9 ] therefore, a facile method for the preparation of a triple-modality probe is needed.
Recently, a few groups reported proof-of-principle results, in which in vivo optical imaging was shown to be achieved using Cerenkov light emitted from the radionuclides clinically