Two separate photostability studies. (a) Lamp irradiation: Four separate cuvettes, each containing 1 μM dye in PBS buffer, pH 7.4, were irradiated by a 150 W Xenon lamp with a 620 nm long-pass filter. The plot of normalized dye absorbance versus time was fit to a one-phase exponential decay. (b) Imaging station irradiation: Imaging phantoms (immobilized 100 μL drops containing s775z or UL766, 10 μM in PBS buffer, pH 7.4) were irradiated with an in vivo imaging station’s 745 nm LED for a total period of 60 min. The mean pixel intensity (MPI) values for the fluorescence images (ex: 745 nm, em: 850 nm) are listed (N=3 for each phantom). The length scale bar on each NIR fluorescence image is 1 cm.