BARIUM DOPED CARBON DOTS AS BIMODAL CT CONTRAST AGENTS

Abstract

In the past several decades computed tomography (CT) has been accepted as a useful tool for bioimaging in medicine. The choice of a suitable contrast agent for CT that is low-cost, effective, and has no side effects is very vital for modern medicine and highly challenging at the same time. Recently, carbon-based quantum dots (CDs) have been proposed for radiological applications thanks to their unique optical properties, low-cost production, non-toxicity, colloidal and chemical stability. The main goal of this research work is to investigate Ba-CDs for potential X-ray attenuation. Compared to widely used lanthanide elements such as Gd, Ba is a much cheaper and naturallyabundant element. In addition, Barium sulfate is already commonly used as an X-ray attenuation contrast agent for gastrointestinal tract visualization. In this thesis, we utilized a facile one-pot hydrothermal reaction to synthesize fluorescent CDs and Ba-CDs from glucose and Ba(NO3)2. The samples were assessed by a range of characterization techniques to evaluate their morphological, elemental, structural, optical, and CT X-ray attenuation properties.