Abstract
We report a cross-referencing method to quickly and accurately characterize the optical properties of nanoparticles including the extinction, scattering, absorption and backscattering cross sections by using an OCT system alone. Among other applications, such a method is particularly useful for developing nanoparticle-based OCT imaging contrast agents. The method involves comparing two depth-dependent OCT intensity signals collected from two samples (with one having and the other not having the nanoparticles), to extract the extinction and backscattering coefficient, from which the absorption coefficient can be further deduced (with the help of the established scattering theories for predicting the ratio of the backscattering to total scattering cross section). The method has been experimentally validated using test nanoparticles and was then applied to characterizing gold nanocages. With the aid of this method, we were able to successfully synthesize scattering dominant gold nanocages for the first time and demonstrated the highest contrast enhancement ever achieved by the gold nanocages (and by any nanoparticles of a similar size and concentration) in an in vivo mouse tumor model. This method also enables quantitative analysis of contrast enhancement and provides a general guideline on choosing the optimal concentration and optical properties for the nanoparticle-based OCT contrast agents.
Highlights
IntroductionThe imaging contrast of optical coherence tomography (OCT) is determined by the optical properties of biological tissue (i.e. scattering and absorption) and is often dominated by scattering
The imaging contrast of optical coherence tomography (OCT) is determined by the optical properties of biological tissue and is often dominated by scattering
We report a new generic method for quickly and accurately characterizing the optical properties of OCT contrast agents, including the total extinction, scattering, absorption and backscattering cross sections, by using an OCT system itself
Summary
The imaging contrast of optical coherence tomography (OCT) is determined by the optical properties of biological tissue (i.e. scattering and absorption) and is often dominated by scattering. Several types of contrast agents, such as core-shell microsphere, air-filled micro-bubbles, dyes and structured gold nanoparticles, have been developed for improving OCT contrast [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Most of these contrast agents are either too large or are dominated by absorption (i.e., absorbing the imaging photons as opposed to enhancing backscattering). The optical properties of gold nanocages can be tailored by modulating the nanostructure geometric parameters including size, wall thickness and wall porosity
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