Differential absorption optical coherence tomography with strong absorption contrast agents of gold nanorods

Abstract

Plasmon-resonant gold nanorods (GNRs) are demonstrated as strong absorption contrast agents for optical coherence tomography (OCT). OCT imaging of tissue phantoms doped with GNRs of different resonant wavelengths and concentrations is studied. To utilize the high absorption property of GNRs, a differential absorption OCT imaging is introduced to retrieve the absorption information of GNRs from conventional backscattered signals. It is shown that the contrast of the OCT image can be enhanced significantly when the plasmon resonant wavelength of the GNRs matches the central wavelength of the OCT source.

Keywords

optical coherence tomography (OCT) / plasmon resonance / gold nanorod (GNR) / differential absorption

References

[1] Huang D, Swanson E A, Lin C P, Schuman J S, Stinson W G, Chang W, Hee M R, Flotte T, Gregory K, Puliafito C A, Fujimoto J G. Optical coherence tomography. Science, 1991, 254(5035): 1178-1181

[2] Barton J K, Hoying J B, Sullivan C J. Use of microbubbles as an optical coherence tomography contrast agent. Academic Radiology, 2002, 9(1): S52-S55

[3] Lee T M, Oldenburg A L, Sitafalwalla S, Marks D L, Luo W, Toublan F J J, Suslick K S, Boppart S A. Engineered microsphere contrast agents for optical coherence tomography. Optics Letters, 2003, 28(17): 1546-1548

[4] Boppart S A, Oldenburg A L, Xu C, Marks D L. Optical probes and techniques for molecular contrast enhancement in coherence imaging. Journal of Biomedical Optics, 2005, 10(4): 041208

[5] Murphy C J, Gole A M, Stone J W, Sisco P N, Alkilany A M, Goldsmith E C, Baxter S C. Gold nanoparticles in biology: beyond toxicity to cellular imaging. Accounts of Chemical Research, 2008, 41(12): 1721-1730

[6] Connor E E, Mwamuka J, Gole A, Murphy C J, Wyatt M D. Gold nanoparticles are taken up by human cells but do not cause acute cytotoxicity. Small, 2005, 1(3): 325-327

[7] Sonnichsen C, Franzl T, Wilk T, Von Plessen G, Feldmann J, Wilson O, Mulvaney P. Drastic reduction of plasmon damping in gold nanorods. Physical Review Letters, 2002, 88(7): 077402

[8] Zagaynova E V, Shirmanova M V, Kirillin M Y , Khlebtsov B N, Orlova A G, Balalaeva I V, Sirotkina M A, Bugrova M L, Agrba P D, Kamensky V A. Contrasting properties of gold nanoparticles for optical coherence tomography: phantom, in vivo studies and Monte Carlo simulation. Physics in Medicine and Biology, 2008, 53(18) 4995-5009

[9] Cang H, Sun T, Li Z Y, Chen J, Wiley B J, Xia Y, Li X. Gold nanocages as contrast agents for spectroscopic optical coherence tomography. Optics Letters, 2005, 30(22): 3048-3050

[10] Oldenburg A L, Hansen M N, Zweifel D A, Wei A, Boppart S A. Plasmon-resonant gold nanorods as low backscattering albedo contrast agents for optical coherence tomography. Optics Express, 2006, 14(15): 6724-6738

[11] Jana N R, Gearheart L, Murphy C J. Wet chemical synthesis of high aspect ratio cylindrical gold nanorods. Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2001, 105(19): 4065-4067

[12] Huang X, El-Sayed I H, Qian W, El-Sayed M A. Cancer cell imaging and photothermal therapy in the near-infrared region by using gold nanorods. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2006, 128(6): 2115-2120

[13] Troutman T S, Barton J K, Romanowski M. Optical coherence tomography with plasmon resonant nanorods of gold. Optics Letters, 2007, 32(11): 1438-1440

[14] Adler D C, Huang S, Huber R, Fujimoto J G. Photothermal detection of gold nanoparticles using phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography. Optics Express, 2008, 16(7): 4376-4393

[15] Skala M C, Crow M J, Wax A, Izatt J A. Photothermal optical coherence tomography of epidermal growth factor receptor in live cells using immunotargeted gold nanospheres. Nano Letters, 2008, 8(10): 3461-3467

[16] Jain P K, Lee K S, El-Sayed I H, El-Sayed M A. Calculated absorption and scattering properties of gold nanoparticles of different size, shape, and composition: applications in biological imaging and biomedicine. Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2006, 110(14): 7238-7248

[17] Nel A, Xia T, Madler L, Li N. Toxic potential of materials at the nanolevel. Science, 2006, 311(5761): 622-627

[18] Prescott S W, Mulvaneya P. Gold nanorod extinction spectra. Journal of Applied Physics, 2006, 99(12): 123504

[19] Babak N, El-Sayed M A. Preparation and growth mechanism of gold nanorods (NRs) using seed-mediated growth method. Chemistry Materials, 2003, 15(10): 1957-1962

[20] Swartling J, Dam J S, Andersson-Engels S. Comparison of spatially and temporally resolved diffuse-reflectance measurement systems for determination of biomedical optical properties. Applied Optics, 2003, 42(22): 4612-4621

[21] Zaccanti G, Bianco S D, Marelli F. Measurements of optical properties of high-density media. Applied Optics, 2003, 42(19): 4023-4030

[22] Van Leeuwen T G, Faber D J, Aalders M C. Measurement of the axial point spread function in scattering media using single-mode fiber-based optical coherence tomography. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 2003, 9(2): 227-234

[23] Schmitt J M, Knuttel A, Bonner R F. Measurement of optical properties of biological tissues by low coherence reflectometry. Applied Optics, 1993, 32(30): 6032-6042

[24] Schmitt J M, Xiang S H, Yung K M. Differential absorption imaging with optical coherence tomography. Journal of the Optical Society of American A, 1998, 15(9): 2288-2296

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 60688401) and partially supported by a multidisciplinary project of Zhejiang University and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg