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Updated: May 6, 2026
Non-invasive Optical Imaging of the Lymphatic Vasculature of a Mouse
Published on: March 8, 2013
An ultra-small organic dye nanocluster for enhancing NIR-II imaging-guided surgery outcomes
Yajun Wang1,2,3, Ding Zhou4, Huilong Ma5
1Department of Vascular Surgery, China-Japan Union Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, 130033, People's Republic of China.
Purpose:
The accuracy of surgery for patients with solid tumors can be greatly improved through fluorescence-guided surgery (FGS). However, existing FGS technologies have limitations due to their low penetration depth and sensitivity/selectivity, which are particularly prevalent in the relatively short imaging window (< 900 nm). A solution to these issues is near-infrared-II (NIR-II) FGS, which benefits from low autofluorescence and scattering under the long imaging window (> 900 nm). However, the inherent self-assembly of organic dyes has led to high accumulation in main organs, resulting in significant background signals and potential long-term toxicity.
Methods:
We rationalize the donor structure of donor-acceptor-donor-based dyes to control the self-assembly process to form an ultra-small dye nanocluster, thus facilitating renal excretion and minimizing background signals.
Results:
Our dye nanocluster can not only show clear vessel imaging, tumor and tumor sentinel lymph nodes definition, but also achieve high-performance NIR-II imaging-guided surgery of tumor-positive sentinel lymph nodes.
Conclusion:
In summary, our study demonstrates that the dye nanocluster-based NIR-II FGS has substantially improved outcomes for radical lymphadenectomy.
