Interstitial diffuse radiance spectroscopy of gold nanocages and nanorods in bulk muscle tissues

Abstract

Serge Grabtchak,1,2 Logan G Montgomery,1 Bo Pang,3,4 Yi Wang,4,5 Chao Zhang,6,7 Zhiyuan Li,6,7 Younan Xia,4,8 William M Whelan1,91Department of Physics, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada; 2Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada; 3Department of Biomedical Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 4The Wallace H Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA; 5Key Laboratory of Green Synthesis and Applications, College of Chemistry, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China; 6Laboratory of Optical Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 7College of Physics and Optoelectronics, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 8School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA; 9Atlantic Veterinary College, Charlottetown, PEI, CanadaAbstract: Radiance spectroscopy was applied to the interstitial detection of localized inclusions containing Au nanocages or nanorods with various concentrations embedded in porcine muscle phantoms. The radiance was quantified using a perturbation approach, which enabled the separation of contributions from the porcine phantom and the localized inclusion, with the inclusion serving as a perturbation probe of photon distributions in the turbid medium. Positioning the inclusion at various places in the phantom allowed for tracking of photons that originated from a light source, passed through the inclusion’s location, and reached a detector. The inclusions with high extinction coefficients were able to absorb nearly all photons in the range of 650–900 nm, leading to a spectrally flat radiance signal. This signal could be converted to the relative density of photons incident on the inclusion. Finally, the experimentally measured quantities were expressed via the relative perturbation and arranged into the classical Beer–Lambert law that allowed one to extract the extinction coefficients of various types of Au nanoparticles in both the transmission and back reflection geometries. It was shown that the spatial variation of perturbation could be described as 1/r dependence, where r is the distance between the inclusion and the detector. Due to a larger absorption cross section, Au nanocages produced greater perturbations than Au nanorods of equal particle concentration, indicating a better suitability of Au nanocages as contrast agents for optical measurements in turbid media. Individual measurements from different inclusions were combined into detectability maps.Keywords: gold nanocages, gold nanorods, turbid media, porcine muscles, diffuse radiance spectroscopy, Beer–Lambert law, perturbation