Single wall carbon nanotube/bis carboxylic acid-ICG as a sensitive contrast agent for in vivo tumor imaging in photoacoustic tomography

In this study, we present a novel photoacoustic contrast agent which is based on bis-carboxylic acid derivative of Indocyanine green (ICG) covalently conjugated to single-wall carbon nanotubes (ICG/SWCNT). Covalently attaching ICG to the functionalized SWCNT provides a more robust system that delivers much more ICG to the tumor site. The detection sensitivity of the new contrast agent in mouse tumor model is demonstrated in vivo by our custom built photoacoustic imaging system. PAT summation signal is defined to show the long-term light absorption of tumor areas in ICG injected mice and ICG/SWCNT injected mice. It is shown that ICG is able to provide 33% enhancement at approximately 20 minutes peak response time referred to pre-injection PAT summation level, while ICG/SWCNT provides 128% enhancement at 80 minutes and even higher enhancement of 196% at the end point of experiments (120 minutes on average). Additionally, the ICG/SWCNT enhancement was mainly observed at the tumor periphery as confirmed by fluorescence images of the tumor samples. This feature is highly valuable in guiding surgeons to assess tumor boundaries and dimensions in vivo and improve surgical resection of tumors for achieving clean tumor margins.