The June 2009 issue of the American Chemical Society publication Nanoletters featured prominently the latest work of Professors Stanislav Emelianov and Konstantin Sokolov on “Plasmonic Intravascular Photoacoustic Imaging for Detection of Macrophages in Atherosclerotic Plaques.”
The June 2009 issue of the American Chemical Society publication Nanoletters featured prominently the latest work of Professors Stanislav Emelianov and Konstantin Sokolov on “Plasmonic Intravascular Photoacoustic Imaging for Detection of Macrophages in Atherosclerotic Plaques.”
The work is featured on the cover pages of this highly cited ACS publication. Appearing in Nano Lett., 9 (6) (2009) 2212–2217, the contribution shows how plasmonic gold nanoparticles are introduced as a contrast agent for intravascular photoacoustic imaging to detect macrophages in atherosclerotic plaques. The phantom and ex vivo tissue studies show that the individual spherical nanoparticles, resonant at 530 nm wavelength, produce a weak photoacoustic signal at 680 nm wavelength while photoacoustic signal from nanoparticles internalized by macrophages is very strong due to the plasmon resonance coupling effect. These results suggest that intravascular photoacoustic imaging can assess the macrophage-mediated aggregation of nanoparticles and therefore identify the presence and the location of nanoparticles associated with macrophage-rich atherosclerotic plaques.
