Bioimaging with luminescent nanoparticle probes have recently attracted widespread interest in biology and medicine. In comparison with commonly used organic dyes, luminescent nanoparticles are better in terms of photostability and sensitivity. These optical features of nanoparticle probes are critical for real time tracking and monitoring of biological events in the cellular level, which may not be accomplished using regular fluorescent dyes. Nanoparticle probes are also shown highly suitable for immunoassay and other diagnostic and therapeutic applications. In this article, we describe a variety of optical nanoparticle probes such as quantum dots, metal nanoparticles, dye-doped nanoparticles etc. for bioimaging applications.

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Polarization-maintaining few-mode fibers (PM-FMFs) have found applications in sensors with attractive features that traditional single-mode fibers do not possess. We propose a measurement method for multi-parameter sensing based on PM-FMFs. This method is mainly based on the polarized interference effect of PM-FMF. We experimentally demonstrate the principle of the simultaneous sensing of temperature, strain and transverse force. The sensor has been verified by three groups of multi-parameter measurement experiments showing that the changes of multi-parameter derived from the wavelength shift of the polarized interference spectrum are consistent with the multi-parameter changes set in the experiments. The proposed PM-FMF based sensor has a temperature sensitivity of 0.3 nm/°C, a strain sensitivity of 0.01 nm/µε and a transverse force sensitivity of 0.0065 nm/(N/m).

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