Quantitative comparison of luminescence probes for biomedical applications.

Optical imaging holds great promise for the early-stage detection of diseases. It plays an important role in the process of protecting the patient's health. Most of the organic dyes suffer due to photobleaching, light scattering, short light penetration depth, and autofluorescence of specimen, thus, need to be replaced with alternative nanoprobes emitting light in the optical biological window (700-1350 nm).