Bioimaging refers to methods and instruments used to acquire, process, and visualize structural or functional images of living objects or systems at desired spatial and temporal scales. Bioimaging can also refer to techniques to used visualize fixed biological samples. Image processing, data mining, and big data analytics are important parts of bioimaging. Bioimaging relates to methods that non-invasively visualize biological processes in real-time. Because of their unique structures and multi functionalities, two-dimensional nanomaterials, such as graphene and graphene-like materials (e.g., graphitic carbon nitride, transition metal dichalcogenides, boron nitride, and transition metal oxides), have attracted great interest in the field of optical biosensors and imaging because of their unique mechanical, physicochemical and optical properties. Depending on the diverse applications, the graphene and graphene-like materials can be tailored to form either fluorescent emitters or efficient fluorescence quenchers, making them powerful platforms for preparing a series of optical biosensors to sensitively detect different targets including ions, proteins, DNA/RNA, and small biomolecules.
