The GNS are also good resonant scatterers, which make them suitable as a contrast agent for OCT (Optical Coherent Tomography) biomedical imaging.

A major advantage of this approach lies in the fact that the photothermal therapy has practically no chemical side effect. Keeping the local temperature at 42~45☌ for a prolonged period leads to the death of cancerous cells by apoptosis or necrosis. Upon irradiation by an NIR laser, strong heating is activated in the GNs embedded in the tissue through strong surface plasma resonant light absorption to raise the local temperature of tumor cells. By conjugating them with cancer targeting agents, the GNs can find and accumulate in cancerous cells after intravenous injection. Use of a light source of a frequency within an NIR band is known to penetrate the deepest into human tissue. A salient feature of this class of nanoparticles is that the localized surface plasma resonance, contributed by the collective oscillation of the conduction band electrons in a gold nanoshell, can be tuned to a light source from visible light to near infrared region (NIR) by varying core/shell structure parameters.

of a dielectric core covered by a thin gold shell, have been considered for potential biomedical applications including photothermal therapy of cancer patients and optical bioimaging.

Nanoshell crystalmaker