Photoacoustic molecular probe detects hypoxia

Hypoxia—damage to tissue caused by low oxygen levels—can be difficult to detect. Jefferson Chan and coworkers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, have developed a small molecule probe they call HyP-1 that improves hypoxia detection by using photoacoustic imaging (Nat. Commun. 2017, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01951-0). In photoacoustic imaging, near-infrared light induces temperature and pressure changes in tissue that result in the . . .