Assessing fluorescence detection and effective photothermal therapy of near-infrared polymer nanoparticles using alginate tissue phantoms.

Objective: Photothermal therapy (PTT) uses light absorbing materials to generate heat for treatment of diseases, like cancer. The advantages of using PTT components that absorb in the near-infrared (NIR) include reduced tissue auto-fluorescence and higher penetration depths. However, NIR laser light can still be scattered and absorbed by biological tissues, thus decreasing the amount of the energy reaching the PTT agents.