Optical coherence tomography and fluorescence microscopy dual-modality imaging for in vivo single-cell tracking with...

Emerging cell-based therapies such as stem cell therapy and immunotherapy have attracted broad attention in both biological research and clinical practice. However, a long-standing technical gap of cell-based therapies is the difficulty of directly assessing treatment efficacy via tracking therapeutically administered cells. Therefore, imaging techniques to follow the in vivo distribution and migration of cells are greatly needed. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a clinically available imaging technology with ultrahigh-resolution and excellent imaging depth. It also shows great potential for in vivo cellular imaging. However, due to the homogeneity of current OCT cell labeling contrast agents (such as gold and polymer nanoparticles), only the distribution of entire cell populations can be observed. Precise tracking of the trajectory of individual single cells is not possible with such conventional contrast agents. Microlasers may provide a route to track unique cell identifiers given their small size, high emission intensities, rich emission spectra, and narrow linewidths. Here, we demonstrate that nanowire lasers internalized by cells provide both OCT and fluorescence signal. In addition, cells can be individually identified by the unique lasing emission spectra of the nanowires that they carry. Furthermore, single cell migration trajectories can be monitored both in vitro and in vivo with OCT and fluorescence microscopy dual-modality imaging system. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of nanowire lasers combined with the dual-modality imaging system for in vivo single cell tracking with a high spatial resolution and identity verification, an approach with great utility for stem cell and immunomodulatory therapies.