Abstract

Harmonic nanoparticles (HNPs) have emerged as appealing exogenous probes for optical bioimaging due to their distinctive features such as long-term photostability and spectral flexibility, allowing multiphoton excitation in the classical (NIR-I) and extended near-infrared spectral windows (NIR-II and -III). However, like all other optical labels, HNPs are not suitable for whole-body imaging applications. In this work, we developed a bimodal nonlinear optical/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent through the covalent conjugation of Gd(III) chelates to coated lithium niobate HNPs. We show that the resulting nanoconjugates exert strong contrast both in T1-weighted MRI of agarose gel-based phantoms and in cancer cells by harmonic generation upon excitation in the NIR region. Their capabilities for dual T1/T2 MRI were also emphasized by the quantitative mapping of the phantom in both modes. The functionalization protocol ensured high stability of the Gd-functionalized HNPs in a physiological environment and provided a high r1 relaxivity value per NP (5.20 × 105 mM–1 s–1) while preserving their efficient nonlinear optical response.

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