Persistent luminescence is a promising bioimaging technique that is not affected by background autofluorescence, but its in vivo application is challenged by the fact that the materials currently available are activated by high-energy light, with emission in the ultraviolet and visible spectral windows. In this paper the authors engineer X-ray activated, lanthanide-based nanoparticles with a tunable emission in the biologically relevant NIR-II spectral region, which allows high-contrast, multimodal in vivo deep-tissue organ imaging.
- Peng Pei
- Ying Chen
- Fan Zhang