High Spatiotemporal Near-Infrared II Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging for Quantitative Detection of Clinical Tumor Margins

Zhen Chen; Linjian Huang; Duyang Gao; Zhouzhou Bao; Dehong Hu; Wei Zheng; Jing Chen; Jiuling Liao; Hairong Zheng; Zonghai Sheng

doi:10.1002/advs.202411272

High Spatiotemporal Near-Infrared II Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging for Quantitative Detection of Clinical Tumor Margins

Adv Sci (Weinh). 2024 Dec 9:e2411272. doi: 10.1002/advs.202411272. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Zhen Chen^{1

2

3}, Linjian Huang⁴, Duyang Gao², Zhouzhou Bao⁵, Dehong Hu², Wei Zheng⁴, Jing Chen¹, Jiuling Liao⁴, Hairong Zheng², Zonghai Sheng²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Radio Frequency Heterogeneous Integration, College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, P. R. China.
² Research Center for Advanced Detection Materials and Medical Imaging Devices, Paul C. Lauterbur Research Center for Biomedical Imaging Institute of Biomedical and Health Engineering, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, 518055, P. R. China.
³ Institute of Microscale Optoelectronics, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, P. R. China.
⁴ Research Center for Biomedical Optics and Molecular Imaging, Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Molecular Imaging, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Optical Imaging Technology Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging Science and System, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, 518055, P. R. China.
⁵ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Gynecologic Oncology, Ren Ji Hospital School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200127, P. R. China.

PMID: 39652447
DOI: 10.1002/advs.202411272

Abstract

Accurate detection of tumor margins is essential for successful cancer surgery. While indocyanine green (ICG)-based near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence (FL) surgical navigation enhances the visual identification of tumor margins, its accuracy remains subjective, underscoring the need for quantitative approaches. In this study, a high spatiotemporal fluorescence lifetime (FLT) imaging technology is developed in the second near-infrared window (NIR-II, 1000-1700 nm) for quantitative tumor margin detection, utilizing folate receptor-targeted ICG nanoprobes (FPH-ICG). FPH-ICG exhibits a significantly prolonged NIR-II FLT (750 ± 7 ps vs 260 ± 3 ps) and increased NIR-II FL brightness (FPH-ICG/ICG = 3.8). In vitro and in vivo studies confirm that FPH-ICG specifically targets folate receptor-α (FRα) on SK-OV-3 ovarian cancer cells, achieving high-contrast NIR-II FL imaging with a signal-to-background ratio of 10.8. Notably, NIR-II FLT imaging demonstrates superior accuracy (90%) and consistency in defining tumor margins compared to NIR-II FL imaging (58%) in both SK-OV-3 tumor-bearing mice and clinical tumor samples. These findings underscore the potential of NIR-II FLT imaging as a quantitative tool for guiding surgical tumor margin detection.

Keywords: indocyanine green; molecular target; near‐infrared‐II fluorescence lifetime; tumor margin.

Abstract

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