Boron Compounds in Molecular Imaging

This chapter discusses selected boron molecule-based molecular imaging agents for the evaluation of various disease areas. Boron-based compounds in imaging are playing an increasingly important role in preclinical target evaluation through noninvasive clinical cancer diagnosis. Improvements in noninvasive imaging strategies have led to the acquisition of detailed information on the transplanted cells for monitoring cellular therapeutics and assessing the immune microenvironment. The nuclear approaches include single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET), which are particularly well suited for in vivo molecular imaging because of their high sensitivity and acceptable spatial resolution, and the availability of instrumentation and molecular probes. Both SPECT and PET imaging have become standard approaches for physiological imaging in patients. Many boron-based optical probes used as novel agents for studying the biology of H₂O₂ and monitoring the transient transition at different levels of development.