Sensitivity improvement of Cerenkov luminescence endoscope with terbium doped Gd2O2S nanoparticles

Our previous study showed a great attenuation for the Cerenkov luminescence endoscope (CLE), resulting in relatively low detection sensitivity of radiotracers. Here, a kind of radioluminescence nanoparticles (RLNPs), terbium doped Gd2O2S was mixed with the radionuclide 68 Ga to enhance the intensity of emitted luminescence, which finally improved the detection sensitivity of the CLE by using the radioluminescence imaging technique. With the in vitro and in vivo pseudotumor experiments, we showed that the use of RLNPs mixed with the radionuclide 68 Ga enabled superior sensitivity compared with the radionuclide 68 Ga only, with 50-fold improvement on detection sensitivity, which guaranteed meeting the demands of the clinical diagnosis of gastrointestinal tract tumors. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.