Imaging carbon nanotubes in vivo: a vignette of imaging modalities at the nanoscale

Nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary research effort bridging many scientific fields from physics and chemistry to engineering, biology, and medicine. The result of such interconnections is holding great potential for the early detection, diagnosis, and personalized treatment of disease. The nanoscale range at which nanosystems operate, i.e., one-thousandth smaller than a human cell, can offer facile transport across the human body and intracellular interactions with many cell components that would otherwise be inaccessible. Imaging for early detection and diagnosis of diseases using newly emerged nanoparticles such as quantum dots (QDs) [21], carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [19], nanoshells [10], paramagnetic nanoparticles [34], and others [6, 9] have been an area of interest over the last few years