Biodistribution Nanoparticle detection
Research on the biodistribution of nanoparticles requires tracking of the applied nanoparticles in the test animal. Conventional light microscopy is not able to detect nanoparticles because of Abbe’s law. Therefore, electron microscopic imaging is often required. However, light microscopy can be used to describe the nanoparticle induced changes in the cell morphology without being able to see the nanoparticles themselves. Additionally, nanoparticles can be indirectly made detectable in light microscopy by a method called utometallography. This is a silver staining that can be used to increase the size of several types of nanoparticles like gold, silver, and some metal sulfides and selenides in the histological section [42]. This technique was used to detect silver nanoparticles in the olfactory bulb and lateral brain ventricles of mice that had been intranasally treated with 25 nm silver nanoparticles [43].