The field of nanoparticles has successfully merged with imaging to optimize contrast agents for many detection techniques. This combination has yielded highly positive results, especially in optical and magnetic imaging, leading to diagnostic methods that are now close to clinical use. Biological sciences have been taking advantage of luminescent labels for many years and the development of luminescent nanoprobes has helped definitively in making the crucial step forward in in vivo applications. To this end, suitable probes should present excitation and emission within the NIR region where tissues have minimal absorbance. Among several nanomaterials engineered with this aim, including noble metal, lanthanide, and carbon nanoparticles and quantum dots, we have focused our attention here on luminescent silica nanoparticles. Many interesting results have already been obtained with nanoparticles containing only one kind of photophysically active moiety. However, the presence of different emitting species in a single nanoparticle can lead to diverse properties including cooperative behaviours. We present here the state of the art in the field of silica luminescent nanoparticles exploiting collective processes to obtain ultra-bright units suitable as contrast agents in optical imaging and optical sensing and for other high sensitivity applications.
Keywords: Luminescent contrast agents nanomedicine; Luminescent probes; Optical imaging; Silica nanoparticles.