contrast enhancement of optical coherence tomography images using branched gold nanoparticles光学相干断层扫描图像的对比度增强使用支金纳米粒子.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Nanomaterials Volume 2012, Article ID 571015, 9 pages doi:10.1155/2012/571015 Research Article Contrast Enhancement of Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using Branched Gold Nanoparticles ´ ´ Y. Ponce de Leon, J. L. Pichardo-Molina, N. Alcala Ochoa, and D. Luna-Moreno ´ Photonics Division, Centro de Investigaciones en Optica, A. C. Loma del Bosque 115, Col. Lomas del Campestre, 37150 Leon, GTO, Mexico ´ Correspondence should be addressed to J. L. Pichardo-Molina, jpichardo@cio.mx Received 7 August 2012; Revised 29 September 2012; Accepted 12 October 2012 Academic Editor: Shuangxi Xing ´ Copyright © 2012 Y. Ponce de Leon et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We propose the use of branched gold nanoparticles (B-GNPs) as a contrast agent for optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging. Our results show that even when the central source of our OCT (1325 nm) is too far from the maximum peak of the plasmon resonance, branched nanoparticles scatter light very efficiently at this wavelength. B-GNPs were tested as a contrast agent in water and agarose-TiO2 tissue phantoms; the estimated increments in contrast were 9.19 dB and 15.07 dB for branched 9 9 nanoparticles in water with concentrations of 2.2 × 10 NPs/mL and 6.6 × 10 NPs/mL,