A symmetrical fluorous dendron-cyanine dye-conjugated bimodal nanoprobe for quantitative ¹⁹f MRI and NIR fluorescence bioimaging

¹⁹F MRI and optical imaging are two powerful noninvasive molecular imaging modalities in biomedical applications. ¹⁹F MRI has great potential for high resolution in vivo imaging, while fluorescent probes enable ultracontrast cellular/tissue imaging with high accuracy and sensitivity. A bimodal nanoprobe is developed, integrating the merits of ¹⁹F MRI and fluorescence imaging into a single synthetic molecule, which is further engineered into nanoprobe, by addressing shortcomings of conventional contrast agents to explore the quantitative ¹⁹F MRI and fluorescence imaging and cell tracking. Results show that this bimodal imaging nanoprobe presents high correlation of ¹⁹F MR signal and NIR fluorescence intensity in vitro and in vivo. Additionally, this nanoprobe enables quantitative ¹⁹F MR analysis, confirmed by a complementary fluorescence analysis. This unique feature can hardly be obtained by traditional ¹⁹F MRI contrast agents. It is envisioned that this nanoprobe can hold great potential for quantitative and sensitive multi-modal molecular imaging.