Shining Light on the Dark Side of Imaging: Excited State Absorption Enhancement of a Bis-styryl BODIPY Photoacoustic Contrast Agent

A first approach toward understanding the targeted design of molecular photoacoustic contrast agents (MPACs) is presented. Optical and photoacoustic Z-scan spectroscopy was used to identify how nonlinear (excited-state) absorption contributes to enhancing the photoacoustic emission of the curcuminBF2 and bis-styryl (MeOPh)2BODIPY dyes relative to Cy3.