Upconverting nanoparticles: a versatile platform for wide-field two-photon microscopy and multi-modal in vivo imaging

Lanthanide-doped upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) have recently attracted enormous attention in the field of biological imaging owing to their unique optical properties: (1) efficient upconversion photoluminescence, which is intense enough to be detected at the single-particle level with a (nonscanning) wide-field microscope setup equipped with a continuous wave (CW) near-infrared (NIR) laser (980 nm), and (2) resistance to photoblinking and photobleaching. Moreover, the use of NIR excitation minimizes adverse photoinduced effects such as cellular photodamage and the autofluorescence background. Finally, the cytotoxicity of UCNPs is much lower than that of other nanoparticle systems. All these advantages can be exploited simultaneously without any conflicts, which enables the establishment of a novel UCNP-based platform for wide-field two-photon microscopy. UCNPs are also useful for mu…