Abstract
Bioimaging enables the spatiotemporal visualization of biological processes at various scales empowered by a range of different imaging modalities and contrast agents. Upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) represent a distinct type of such contrast agents with the potential to transform bioimaging due to their unique optical properties and functional design flexibilities. This review explores and discusses the opportunities, challenges, and limitations that UCNPs exhibit as bioimaging probes and highlights applications with spatial dimensions ranging from the single nanoparticle level to cellular, tissue, and whole animal imaging. We further summarized recent advancements in bioimaging applications enabled by UCNPs, including super-resolution techniques and multimodal imaging methods, and provide a perspective on the future potential of UCNP-based technologies in bioimaging research and clinical translation. This review may provide a valuable resource for researchers interested in exploring and applying UCNP-based bioimaging technologies.
🔬 Techniques
🔭 Microscopes
✨ Fluorophores
🧪 Sample Preparation
🔬 Cell Lines
🏭 Microscope Brands
🏛️ Research Organizations (ROR)
Affiliated research institutions:
📊 Figures
Figure 1:
Simplified schematic representation of photophysical properties of upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs).
Colloidal dispersions of (a) u03b2-NaYF4(Yb 3+ /Er 3+ ) UCNPs and (b) u03b2-NaYF4(Yb 3+ /Tm 3+ ) UCNPs in cyclohexane with corresponding upconversion luminescence spectra upon 980 nm continuous wave (...
Figure 2:
A depiction of different photon upconverting processes in comparison to single-photon absorption.
Asterisks (*) denote photon absorption, tildes (~) denote photon release, straight arrows denote a shift in energy state within an atom/ion and a curved arrow denotes a transfer of energy between ions...
Figure 3:
Interactions between light and biological tissue.
(A) The tissue penetration of light is wavelength-dependent. Longer wavelengths typically tend to exhibit deeper penetration depths in biological tissue. The light tissue penetration data in this diag...
Figure 4:
Visualization of individual upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) through super-resolution techniques.
(A) Super-resolution stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED) images of 40-nm UCNPs doped with NaYF 4 (20% Yb and 8% Tm). The authors reported a lateral resolution limit of 28 nm when using 13-...
Figure 5:
Potential approaches for upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs)-based multiplexing in cellular imaging.
(A) Wang et al . demonstrated upconversion luminescence lifetime engineering to control the UCNPsu2019 emission lifetimes through nanoparticle design (scale bars = 2 u03bcm). [ 25 ] The engineered UCN...
Figure 6:
Upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) enable multimodal bioimaging and in vivo imaging.
UCNPs can be designed for multimodal imaging, including but not limited to X-ray/computed tomography (CT) imaging, photoacoustic imaging (PAI), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and ...
Figure images are served from the NIH/NLM PubMed Central Open Access Subset or Europe PMC; copyright remains with the publishers and authors.
💬 Discussion
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