Hydrothermal Synthesis of Monodispersed BaGdF5:Yb/Er Nanoparticles for CTand MRImaging

In this paper, we report the development of a facile one-pot hydrothermal method for the controlled synthesis of monodispersed BaGdF5:Yb/Er nanoparticles for computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. The as-prepared nanoparticles have uniform size with a diameter of 20–25 nm. MTTtests show that the cell viability surpasses 90% even with a concentration of nanoparticles of 500 µg/mL, suggesting that the as-prepared BaGdF5:Yb/Er nanoparticles possess low toxicity. For both BaGdF5:Yb/Er nanoparticles and iopromide, the Hounsfield unit (HU) values increase with the their concentration. The slope of BaGdF5:Yb/Er nanoparticles is about 26.47, which is much higher than that of iopromide (16.98), indicating a better CTimaging effect. Interestingly, we find that the synthesized BaGdF5:Yb/Er nanoparticles exhibit paramagnetism. Our in vitroand in vivoimaging experiments demonstrate that the synthesized monodispersed BaGdF5:Yb/Er nanoparticles can serve as effective contrast agents for CTand MRimaging. Upconversion nanoparticles have the promising application as contrast agent for computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. In this contribution, a facile one-pot hydrothermal method has been developed for synthesis of monodispersed BaGdF5:Yb/Er nanoparticles (20-25 nm). In vitro and in vivo imaging results demonstrated the synthesized BaGdF5:Yb/Er nanoparticles can serve as effective contrast agents for CT and MR imaging.