ABSTRACT
Contrast agents are very valuable in medical imaging, as they provide additional diagnostic information. Nanoparticles offer several advantages as contrast agents, such as high payloads, longer circulation times, efficient targeting, and unique forms of contrast, among others. Their applications in medical imaging include long-circulating blood pool agents, targeted imaging, cell tracking, and intraoperative imaging. In this chapter, we describe some of the main medical imaging techniques, that is, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, nuclear imaging, fluorescence imaging, photoacoustics, and SERS imaging. We discuss how nanoparticles can produce contrast for these methods and review the different types of nanoparticles that have been used for each technique. Platforms that are covered include liposomes, micelles, emulsions, dendrimers, polymeric nanoparticles, natural nanoparticles (lipoproteins, viruses, ferritin), quantum dots, gold nanoparticles, iron oxides, upconverting nanoparticles, carbon nanostructures, and others. Last, we have included highlighted examples, where the platform and its in vivo application are discussed in detail. All together, we present to the reader an overview of the field of nanoparticle contrast agents for medical imaging, which we hope will inspire the reader to study aspects of interest in the field in greater detail.
