Singlet Oxygen Imaging
Molecular oxygen is one of the most important molecules in maintaining life as well as in mechanisms by which life is extinguished and materials destroyed. For several decades, researchers have been intrigued by the physical and chemical properties of molecular oxygen’s lowest excited state, singlet oxygen (1O2). In particular, singlet oxygen has a unique reactivity that can result in polymer degradation or the death of biological cells. Its role as an intermediate in cell death is exploited by photodynamic therapy (PDT) for cancer, a technique in which light is utilized as a medical tool1,2.
In PDT, a photosensitizer is incorporated into abnormal tissues and then irradiated with visible light so that it transfers energy to ground-state oxygen via the type II photochemical pathway, producing singlet oxygen (which can be directly detected by its weak 1270 nm emission)3. Owing to the special interest in elucidating the biochemical action of singlet oxygen on the subcellular level, several high-spatial-resolution methods have been proposed to detect 1O2 luminescence using either a single photomultiplier tube (PMT), a linear InGaAs detector array, or a two-dimensional InGaAs detector3.
Additional details can be found in “Real-Time Imaging of Singlet Oxygen via Innovative Microspectroscopy Instrument.”
1. Schweitzer C. and Schmidt R. Physical mechanisms of generation and deactivation of singlet oxygen. Chem. Rev. 103, 1685–1757 (2003). 2. Skovsen, E. Progress report: Non-linear two-photon singlet oxygen emission microscopy. Department of Chemistry, University of Aarhus, Denmark (2004). 3. Hu B., He Y., and Liu Z. NIR area array CCD-based singlet oxygen luminescence imaging for photodynamic therapy. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 277 (2011).
PI recommends the NIRvana:640 camera for singlet oxygen imaging. We designed this 16-bit camera specifically for scientific research applications requiring superb linearity and excellent near-infrared sensitivity. Its 640 x 512 InGaAs detection array, which delivers response from 0.9 μm to 1.7 μm, can be thermoelectrically cooled as low as -85°C in order to minimize thermally generated noise and improve signal-to-noise ratio.
4. Scholz M., Dedic R., Valenta J., Breitenbach T., and Hála J. Real-time luminescence microspectroscopy monitoring of singlet oxygen in individual cells. Photochem. Photobiol. Sci. 13, 1203–1212 (2014). DOI: 10.1039/c4pp00121d
NIR luminescence microspectroscopy setup: lower portion of diagram depicts spectral regions detected by VIS and NIR paths. For more details, refer to “Real-Time Imaging of Singlet Oxygen via Innovative Microspectroscopy Instrument”.
DOI: 10.1039/c4pp00121d - Adapted by permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) on behalf of the European Society for Photobiology, the European Photochemistry Association, and RSC. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2014/pp/c4pp00121d#!divAbstract
Real-Time Imaging of Singlet Oxygen via Innovative Microspectroscopy Instrument
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