Nanomaterials for diagnostic imaging of the brain

Various brain diseases including Alzheimer's disease, stroke, and cancer are major causes of death worldwide. Due to the notion that early diagnosis significantly increases success in treatments, several non-invasive bioimaging modalities such as MRI, CT, and PET are increasingly used to locate pathologic sites in the brain. To further enhance the quality of diagnostic imaging, efforts are incrementally made to couple imaging contrasts of interests to macromolecules or nanoparticles designed to cross over the brain-blood barrier and to bind to pathologic tissue. This chapter will therefore review such important emerging technologies for diagnostic imaging of brain and some preclinical and clinical success, so we can ultimately assist efforts to take diagnosis quality to the next level.