Bacteria-targeted infection imaging: Towards a faster diagnosis of bacterial infection

Bacterial infections occur frequently and are a major threat to human health, causing high morbidity and mortality all over the world. For adequate treatment of infections, a rapid and precise diagnosis is imperative. Presently, this is achieved via microbiological culture and molecular detection, which are often time-consuming processes. Moreover, it is not always possible to obtain appropriate material for culturing, which complicates the diagnostic process. Therefore, the PhD research described in this thesis was aimed at exploring imaging-based techniques for faster and preferably real-time diagnosis of infectious diseases, and for rapid distinction of bacterial infection from sterile inflammation. To this end, the development of new bacteria-targeted imaging modalities was reviewed with a special focus on bacteria-targeted imaging with fluorescent tracers. Subsequently, the possible use of different tracers for infection imaging was experimentally explored. The results show that imaging with fluorescent bacteria-targeted tracers can be readily applied to detect infection ex vivo, by arthroscopy or bronchoscopy, or intra-operatively. Altogether, it is concluded that bacteria-targeted fluorescence imaging approaches may allow faster, real-time diagnosis of bacterial infections.