Integrating the second near-infrared fluorescence imaging with clinical techniques for multimodal cancer imaging by neodymiumdoped gadolinium tungstate nanoparticles

Second near-infrared(NIR-II)fluorescence imaging is a recently emerged technique and is highly useful for accurate diagnosis of cancer.Although a diverse array of fluorescent nanomaterials have been developed to enable NIR-II fluorescence in various situations,they normally fail to unify the clinical techniques,such as computed tomography(CT)and magnetic resonance imaging(MRI).Therefore,exploiting multimodal agents to integrate the newly emerged NIR-II fluorescence and traditional clinical techniques would be of key significance.Here,we report a rational fabrication of neodymium(Nd)-doped gadolinium tungstate nanoparticles(NPs)that are subsequentially decorated with a hydrophilic layer and demonstrate that they can achieve the harmonious integration of NIR-II fluorescence imaging,CT,and MRI.The NIR-II fluorescence emission was activated by an incident light with discrete wavelength ranging from 250 to 810 nm.NIR-II fluorescence-CT-MRI associated trimodal imaging was subsequently demonstrated for breast cancer by an 808 nm laser,along with the estimation of NIR-II fluorescence imaging for cervical cancer.The integration of newly emerged and traditional clinical imaging techniques highlights the huge potential of rare-earth-doped NPs for multimodal imaging of different types of cancer.