Synthesis of Silicon-Substituted Hemicyanines for Multimodal SWIR Imaging.

SWIR dyes offer many advantages over their more common NIR congeners; however, the available options are limited. New SWIR imaging agents can be accessed by remodeling existing NIR molecules ( i.e. , hemicyanines (HDs)). In this study, we synthesized SWIR-HD, a modified HD featuring dimethylsilicon and benzo[ cd ]indolium groups that are designed to red-shift the absorbance and emission to 988 and 1126 nm, respectively. SWIR-HD was employed to visualize the liver and tumors via multimodal SWIR imaging.