Cyanine

Cyanine is a non-systematic name of a synthetic dye family belonging to polymethine group. The word cyanin is from the English word “cyan", which conventionally means a shade of blue-green (close to "aqua") and is derived from the Greek “kyanos" which means a somewhat different color: "dark blue".

Cyanines were and are still used in industry, and more recently in biotechnology (labeling, analysis). Cyanines have many uses as fluorescent dyes, particularly in biomedical imaging. Depending on the structure, they cover the spectrum from IR to UV. There are a large number reported in the literature.