A novel near-infrared photoacoustic nanoscale contrast agent platform (Conference Presentation)

We are reporting the synthesis of a novel indocyanine green J aggregate (ICG-JA)-based platform for deep in vivo targeted photoacoustic imaging (PAI) in the near infrared regime. We demonstrate the robustness and the scalability of our synthesis procedure yielding monodisperse functionalized ICG-JA with sizes ranging from 110 to 1000 nm and a concentration up to 800 µM. Our in vitro study demonstrates that our platform has a PA signal 2.5 times higher than the whole blood and offers targeting ability. Our in vivo results indicate an enhanced visualization of various organs even at contrast agent concentration as low as 50 µM.