Multimodality Molecular Imaging of Cardiovascular Disease Based on Nanoprobes

Recently, multimodality molecular imaging has evolved into a fast-growing research field with goals of detecting and measuring biological processes in vivo non-invasively. Researchers have come to realize that the complementary abilities of different imaging modalities over single modality could provide more precisely information for the diagnosis of diseases. At present, nanoparticles-based multimodal imaging probes have received significant attention because of their ease of preparation and straightforward integration of each modality into one entity. More importantly, nanotechnology has an increasing impact on multimodality molecular imaging of cardiovascular diseases, such as atherosclerosis and vulnerable plaque, myocardial infarction, angiogenesis, apoptosis and so on. In this review, we briefly summarize that various nanoprobes are exploited for targeted molecular imaging of cardiovascular diseases, as well as associated multimodality imaging approaches and their applications in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.