Optical Imaging of Up-Conversion Nanoparticles Attached Magnetic Nano-Swimmers Through Tissue-Mimicking Phantoms

Biological tissues have optical scattering and absorption properties, making them appear opaque. Therefore, visualizing the deep intact tissue is one of the major challenges in Biomedical imaging. Optical imaging using the Near-infrared source provides an advantage of high-resolution deep tissue imaging but has the limitation of autofluorescence and scattering. Lanthanide-doped Up-conversion nanoparticles (UPCNs) are the new generation fluorophores that show a unique luminescence property and attract greater attention in biomedical imaging. In this work, we have attached the UPCNs to the magnetic helical nano-swimmers to be used as NIR probe and optically imaged them through the tissue-mimicking phantoms.