title: Magnetic and Plasmonic Contrast Agents in Optical Coherence Tomography.
abstract: Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has gained widespread application for many biomedical applications, yet the traditional array of contrast agents used in incoherent imaging modalities do not provide contrast in OCT. Owing to the high biocompatibility of iron oxides and noble metals, magnetic and plasmonic nanoparticles, respectively, have been developed as OCT contrast agents to enable a range of biological and pre-clinical studies. Here we provide a review of these developments within the past decade, including an overview of the physical contrast mechanisms and classes of OCT system hardware addons needed for magnetic and plasmonic nanoparticle contrast. A comparison of the wide variety of nanoparticle systems is also presented, where the figures of merit depend strongly upon the choice of biological application.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the Biomedical Research Imaging Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255 USA.
authors.forename: Amy L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Oldenburg
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255 USA.
authors.forename: Richard L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Blackmon
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255 USA.
authors.forename: Justin M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Sierchio
keywords: Contrast agents; magnetomotive; optical coherence tomography; plasmonic nanoparticles; superparamagnetic iron oxides