Reconstruction of local three-dimensional temperature field of tumor cells with low-toxic nanoscale quantum-dot thermometer and cepstrum spatial localization algorithm

The optimal method for three-dimensional thermal imaging within cells involves collecting intracellular temperature responses while simultaneously obtaining corresponding 3D positional information. Current temperature measurement techniques based on the photothermal properties of quantum dots face several limitations, including high cytotoxicity and low fluorescence quantum yields. These issues affect the normal metabolic processes of tumor cells. This study synthesizes a low-toxicity cell membrane-targeted quantum dot temperature sensor by optimizing the synthesis method of CdTe/CdS/ZnS core-shell structured quantum dots. Compared to CdTe-targeted quantum dot temperature sensors, the cytotoxicity of CdTe/CdS/ZnS-targeted quantum dot temperature sensors is reduced by 40.79%. Additionally, a novel cepstrum-based spatial localization algorithm is proposed to achieve rapidly compute the three-dimensional positions of densely distributed quantum dot temperature sensors. Ultimately, both targeted and non-targeted CdTe/CdS/ZnS quantum dot temperature sensors were used simultaneously to label the internal and external regions of human osteosarcoma cells to obtain temperature data at these labeling positions. By combining this with the cepstrum-based spatial localization algorithm, the spatial coordinates of the quantum dot temperature sensors were obtained. Three-dimensional temperature field reconstruction of three local regions was achieved within a 12 μm axial range in living cells. The method described in this paper can be widely applied to the quantitative study of intracellular thermal responses.