Nanoparticle-mediated radiopharmaceutical-excited fluorescence molecular imaging allows precise image-guided tumor-removal surgery

This study presents a novel nanoparticle-mediated radiopharmaceutical-excited fluorescent (REF) image-guided cancer surgery strategy, which employs the internal dual-excitation of europium oxide (EO) nanoparticles with gamma rays and Cerenkov luminescence emitted from radiopharmaceuticals. The performance of the novel image-guided surgery technique was systematically evaluated using subcutaneous breast cancer tumor models, and orthotopic and orthotropic-ectopic hepatocellular carcinoma tumor models in vivo. The results reveal that the novel REF image-guided cancer surgery technique exhibits high performance of detecting invisible ultra-small size tumor (even less than 1 mm) and residual tumor tissue.302