Imaging techniques and materials design have become a common pairing towards the investigation of new treatment options and diagnostics. The precision and tunability of drug delivery systems combined with the power of multimodal molecular imaging has significantly advanced the knowledge and understanding of drug interactions with diseases. The wide variety of nanomaterials, small molecules, and biological systems has resulted in a myriad of new methods for their synthesis and preparation. Simultaneously, new techniques and methods have been established to image the biological behavior of these constructs both in vivo and in vitro. New constructs with both therapeutic and diagnostic capability (theragnostics) have allowed scientists to interrogate the specific interactions of their drug delivery systems and the therapeutics with the target site, giving rise to greater mechanistic insight for future development.

In this collection the methods used for the preparation of these advanced therapeutic, diagnostic or theragnostic constructs and the molecular imaging methods used for the in vivo and in vitro interrogation of their interaction with the target site and disease are explored.

The goal of this methods collection is to aid in the standardization of materials preparation and biological in vivo/in vitro characterization for comparable results across therapeutic, diagnostic, and theragnostic systems.