Engineering compact imaging probes with highly integrated modalities is a key focus in bionanotechnology and will have profound impact on molecular diagnostics, imaging, and therapeutics. However, combining multiple components on a nanometer scale to create new imaging modalities unavailable from individual components has proven challenging. Here, we demonstrate iron oxide and gold coupled core-shell nanoparticles with well defined structural characteristics (e.g., size, shell thickness, and core-shell separation) and physical properties (e.g., electronic, magnetic, optical, thermal, and acoustic). The resulting multifunctional nanoprobes not only offer contrast for electron microscopy, magnetic resonance imaging, and scattering-based imaging, but more importantly, enable a new imaging mode, magnetomotive photoacoustic (mmPA) imaging, with remarkable contrast enhancement compared to PA images using conventional nanoparticle contrast agents.

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A targeted gold nanoparticle has been developed as a contrast agent for photoacoustic medical imaging. We have studied cancer cell targeting by antibody conjugated gold nanorods for high contrast photoacoustic imaging. By changing the aspect ratio of the elongated "rod" shape of the gold nanoparticle, its plasmon peak absorption wavelength can be tuned to the near IR ͑700-900 nm͒ for an increased penetration depth into biological tissue. Effective cell targeting and sensitive photoacoustic detection of a single layer of cells are demonstrated. Combining ultrasound with contrast agent based photoacoustic imaging is proposed as a visual tool to compound molecular and structural information for early stage prostate cancer detection.