In Vivo Spectral Distortions of Infrared Luminescent Nanothermometers Compromise Their Reliability

Abstract

“This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in ACS Nano, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsnano.9b08824Luminescence nanothermometry has emerged over the past decade as an exciting field of research due to its potential applications where conventional methods have demonstrated to be ineffective. Preclinical research has been one of the areas that have benefited the most from the innovations proposed in the field. Nevertheless, certain questions concerning the reliability of the technique under in vivo conditions have been continuously overlooked by most of the scientific community. In this proof-of-concept, hyperspectral in vivo imaging is used to explain how unverified assumptions about the thermal dependence of the optical transmittance of biological tissues in the so-called biological windows can lead to erroneous measurements of temperature. Furthermore, the natural steps that should be taken in the future for a reliable in vivo luminescence nanothermometry are discussed together with a perspective view of the field after the findings here reportedThis work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under projects MAT2016-75362-C3-1-R, MAT2017-83111R, and MAT2017-85617-R, by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI16/00812), and by the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (B2017/BMD-3867RENIMCM) and cofinanced by the European Structural and investment fund. Additional funding was provided by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 FET Open programme (grant agreement No 801305), the Fundación para la Investigación Biomédica del Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal project IMP18_38 (2018/0265), and also COST action CA17140. Y. Shen acknowledges a scholarship from the China Scholarship Council (No. 201806870023