A research team led by Dr. Young Il Park and Dr. Sang Hwan Nam of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), in collaboration with Sung-Jin Park, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has developed a polymerized version of the clinically approved NIR fluorescent dye indocyanine green (ICG) that exhibits greatly enhanced photostability.

Near-infrared (NIR) imaging is widely used for medical diagnosis and image-guided surgery.

Light in the near-infrared region (approximately 650–900 nm) penetrates biological tissues much more effectively than visible light because it experiences relatively low absorption by water and hemoglobin. Combined with fluorescent dyes, NIR light enables imaging of biological tissues several centimeters beneath the surface.