Optical imaging in drug discovery and diagnostic applications.

Optical imaging combines a variety of different diagnostic modalities which have shown great promise for biomedical imaging and as a tool in drug discovery. Several different principles to identify and characterize fundamental processes at the organ, tissue, cellular and molecular level have been exploited, supported by the design of novel imaging agents and biomolecular reporter systems. New optical imaging procedures will contribute considerably to the improvement of the knowledge of disease processes and the more efficient evaluation of drug effects in living laboratory animals. They may also find new diagnostic and therapeutic applications in human clinical practices. These techniques can be used in the field of molecular imaging to allow both visualization and quantification of molecular events associated with disease in a non-invasive and radiation-free manner using relatively simple equipment. The different aspects of imaging instrumentation and methods; the achievements in synthesis and evaluation of novel imaging agents and biochemical reporters; as well as the opportunities of optical imaging in drug delivery, drug discovery and imaging diagnostics will be discussed in this review article.