Contrast Agents

Motivation

FDA-approved fluorescent dyes have wide clinical applications in fluorescence imaging. However, these contrast agents are unsuitable for longitudinal imaging due to poor photostability, low photothermal conversion, and inefficient optoacoustic generation. There is an ongoing need for novel synthetic approaches to develop contrast agents with improved photothermal and optoacoustic generation properties.

Research focus

• Design and synthesis of dyes for NIR-I and NIR-II optoacoustic imaging
• Photo-transformable (photoactivation, photoswitching and photoconversion) dyes for in vivo biomolecule tracking
• pH-sensitive optoacoustic dyes for sensitive visualisation of the tumor microenvironment
• Multifunctional theranostics for imaging and phototherapy