Computed tomography lacks sensitivity to image gold labelled mesenchymal stromal cells in vivo as evidenced by multispectral optoacoustic tomography.

Elucidating the mechanisms of action and long-term safety of cell therapies is necessary for their clinical translation. Non-invasive imaging technologies such as bioluminescence imaging (BLI), computed tomography (CT) and multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) have been proposed as tools for longitudinal cell monitoring but their performances have not been compared. Here, we evaluate combinations of these modalities to track the in vivo distribution of gold-labelled mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). We found that injected MSCs labelled with gold nanoparticles and expressing the reporter gene firefly luciferase could be detected with BLI and MSOT but not CT. We conclude that the MSCs did not carry enough contrast agent to be tracked by CT, demonstrating that CT tracking of gold-labelled cells is not a practical approach as high amounts of gold, which might impair cell viability, are necessary.