A critical review of advances in surface plasmon resonance imaging sensitivity

Surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi) has more and more applications in the fields of biology and life sciences due to its unique features of label-free and high-throughput detection and workability in physiological conditions, however it is suffering from insufficient sensitivity, especially in detecting the small molecules or low level of substances. Various methods have since been developed to improve its sensitivity, but it lacks of summary except for their working principles, setups and applications. This review is thus designed to summary the sensitivity-oriented research progresses, covering signal enhancement and/or amplification, and noise and background suppression, with chemistry-enhancing strategies as focus and non-chemistry as supplement. A brief prospect in near future is also given.