Stable and non-toxic ultrasmall Gd2O3 nanoparticle colloids as high-performance T1 MRI-CA were developed.

Ultrasmall Gd2O3 nanoparticle colloids coated with PAA and Rho-PAA were synthesized and applied to T1 MRI, GdNCT and fluorescent tumor cell detection.

No abstract

No abstract

Nanoparticles are very important in biomedical imaging because their imaging properties are superior to those of small molecules. They can be further functionalized for multimodal imaging through surface modification. In this study, we synthesized dye-coated ultrasmall gadolinium oxide nanoparticles [dye = fluorescein and fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)] in one-pot and investigated their dual imaging properties. The dye-coated gadolinium oxide nanoparticles exhibited excellent relaxometric properties suitable for T 1 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): r 1 = 9.8 s −1 mM −1 (r 2 /r 1 = 2.6) for fluorescein-coated nanoparticles (d avg = 1.6 AE 0.1 nm) and r 1 = 12.3 s −1 mM −1 (r 2 /r 1 = 2.3) for FITC-coated nanoparticles (d avg = 1.4 AE 0.1 nm), and strong photoluminescence (PL) in the green region (around 514 nm) suitable for fluorescent imaging (FI). The dye-coated nanoparticles exhibited strong fluorescence in cellular confocal images and high contrast in T 1 MR images in mice, suggesting that they are potential dual T 1 MRI-FI agents.