Gold Nanoparticle Parameters Play an Essential Role As Ct Imaging Contrast Agents Publisher

Summary: Are gold nanoparticles the future contrast agents in CT imaging? Research indicates smaller GNPs show significant X-ray attenuation in nasopharyngeal cancer cells. #GoldNanoparticles #CTImaging

Asadinezhad M¹ ; Azimian H² ; Ghadiri H³ ; Khademi S¹
Source: Journal of Nanostructures Published:2021

Abstract

Computed tomography (CT) is extensively used in clinical imaging modalities. There have recently been many reports to motivate for developing newer contrast agents. As a new contrast agent, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) have gained recent attention. In this paper, the effects of parameters related to gold nanoparticles (sizes, shapes, concentrations, and surface chemistries) on X-ray attenuation beam in human nasopharyngeal cancer cells were investigated. Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E), Colony, and MTT assays were applied to measure the compatibility of the NPs in cells. Our findings indicated that the GNPs with Au core sizes of ~13 nm and ~60 nm and polyethylene glycol covering on gold nanorods (PEG-GNRs) are non-cytotoxic and GNRs with an aspect ratio of 2.4 and 4.2 are toxic in a concentration range. At 80 kVp, GNPs (13 nm) enables 3.03–times higher contrast than iodine at a concentration of 5000 μM. The GNPs (13 nm) X-ray attenuations were 2.55-times and 1.63-times higher than PEG-GNRs and GNPs (60 nm) in cancer cells, respectively. X-ray attenuation highly increased when the concentration of mass (measured by ICP-OES) of NPs was elevated. In sum, smaller spherical GNPs can be proposed as an excellent possibility to Omnipaque for CT imaging of nasopharyngeal cancer cells © This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License