Chapter 8: Chemiluminescence-based Imaging

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of chemiluminescence, from its historical origins to modern imaging applications. The focus is on recent advancements in chemiluminescence imaging tools, emphasizing the revolutionary role of dioxetane-based probes. These probes are compatible with biological systems, allow controlled chemiexcitation and exceptional efficiency under physiological conditions, and thus stand out as pivotal tools in molecular imaging. The chapter navigates through the discovery of chemiluminescence, its comparison to fluorescence, and the classification of chemiluminescent materials. Then, it describes two classes of chemiluminescent compounds: oxidation-dependent (such as luminol and oxalate esters) and dioxetane probes. The latter, a breakthrough in the last decade, allow for precise control over the chemiexcitation event, enabling diverse chemical biology applications. This chapter concludes with recent developments in the realm of dioxetane probes, elucidating their real-time chemiluminescence imaging of small molecules and enzymes. At this point, these dioxetane probes give great promise at the forefront of future advancements in chemiluminescence imaging.