Cancer threatens the life and health of human beings, while the effective treatment of cancer is a major challenge. The design of fluorescent probe provides the strategy for developing effective therapeutic nanomaterials that can detect and identify cancer cells as well as achieve targeted and image-guided cancer therapy. Among the fluorescent nanomaterials studied, carbon dots (CDs) have attracted increasing attention owing to their most significant advantages in terms of diverse imaging features, high drug loading as well as low toxicity, and thus they have emerged as one of the most appealing candidates in the field of imaging-guided theranostics. In this review, we firstly overview the imaging analysis of cancer cells, including single-modal imaging and multi-modal imaging. After the introduction of diverse imaging features, we focus on the design of imaging-assisted drug delivery system. Finally, the current development of CDs in imaging-guided photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT) are further described.

癌症威胁着人类的生命和健康，而有效治疗癌症是一项重大挑战。荧光探针的设计为开发有效的治疗性纳米材料提供了策略，该材料可以检测和鉴定癌细胞以及实现靶向和图像引导的癌症治疗。在研究的荧光纳米材料中，碳点（CD）由于其在多种成像特征，高载药量和低毒性方面的最显着优势而受到越来越多的关注，因此它们已成为碳纳米管中最吸引人的候选之一成像引导治疗学领域。在这篇综述中，我们首先概述了癌细胞的成像分析，包括单模态成像和多模态成像。引入了多种成像功能之后，我们专注于成像辅助药物输送系统的设计。最后，进一步介绍了CD在成像引导光热疗法（PTT）和光动力疗法（PDT）中的最新发展。