Recent advances in gold nanostructures based biosensing and bioimaging

Gold nanostructures have been arousing great interest due to their superb optical, catalytic, and chemical properties, which enable a broad of applications. In this review, on one hand, optical biosensing on basis of various gold nanostructures are summarized dependent mainly on how nanostructures signify the recognition and targeting events for specific molecules. On the other hand, sensors based on the peroxidase-like activity and electrocatalytic properties of gold nanostructures are highlighted. In addition to dark field and SERS imaging, the gold nanostructures based imaging session is devoted to the discussion of photoacoustic and computer tomography imaging. Finally, current challenges and perspectives on the gold nanostructures based biosensing and biomedical imaging are envisioned. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.