. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Dec 1.

Published in final edited form as: J Imaging. 2018 Dec 12;4(12):149. doi: 10.3390/jimaging4120149

Table 3.

Summarization of common contrast agents applied for photoacoustic microcopy and optical coherence tomography. FA: fluorescein angiography, OCT: optical coherence tomography.

Contrast Agents	Characterization	Application
Organic agents
Indocyanine green	High penetration depth	PAM, Indocyanine green angiography (ICGA)
Evans blue	Soluble and easy clearance via recticuloendothelial system (RES)	Microvascular network imaging
Cy7 fluorophore [63]	Non-toxic, biocompatible, biodegradability, high stability ad long circulation time	OCT contrast agent, tumor imaging agents
Fluorescein sodium dye	Biocompatibility	FA
Inorganic agents
Gold nanorod [70,80,81]	High penetration depth; relative slow tissue clearance	PAM, OCT, photothermal OCT, biomarker for molecular imaging
Gold nanoprisms [82]	Work in second near infrared window; deeper image depth	Enhanced OCT angiography