Dependence Of Photoacoustic Signal Generation Characteristics On Fluorescence Quantum Yields Of Small Organic Molecule Based Contrast Agents

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is advantageous in contrast agent imaging because of high spatial resolution at depth more than several millimeter inside biological tissues. To detect small tumors specifically, we are developing small organic molecule-based activatable PA probe with mechanism similar to that of the enzyme-activatable fluorescence probe that have successfully used for rapid fluorescence imaging of small tumors. The probe can be imaged also by fluorescence imaging and the fluorescence image can be merged onto the PA images. To extend the imaging depth by increasing PA signal intensity, PA probe that produce PA signals efficiently is required. To select small organic molecules suitable for PA probe, we synthesized small-organic molecule-based contrast agents with various absorption spectra and fluorescence quantum yields and then we exhaustively evaluated their PA signal generation characteristics including PA signal generation efficiencies. To analyze PA signal generation efficiencies precisely, the absolute values of PA signal pressures produced from aqueous solutions of the contrast agents were measured by P(VDF-TrFE) piezoelectric film acoustic sensor. As a result, small organic molecule with low fluorescence quantum yield produced PA signals efficiently. Thus, as opposed to fluorescence probes, PA probes should have low fluorescence quantum yields. By considering the result and other characteristics including excitation wavelengths, we could single out the small organic molecule suitable for PA probe. We synthesized the new activatable PA probe with low fluorescence quantum yield and excitation wavelength longer than 600 nm and its specificity was examined in in vitro experiment.