Magnetic and Plasmonic Contrast Agents in Optical Coherence Tomography

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 add-ons 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.