Brain is the least accessible part of our body, it is protected by the blood brain barrier, which makes the direct treatment monitoring difficult. Non-invasive imaging such as MRI is a solution. In our lab, we are interested in developing nanotherapeutics to facilitate treatment and treatment monitoring using MRI. This is achieved by developing a series of hydrogel and nanocarriers that have specific mechanical and imaging properties for neural therapeutics. For example, we have shown that the recently developed theranostic hydrogels combined with pH-nanosensors can reveal cell viability using CEST MRI, which facilitate cell delivery, protect the delivered therapeutic cells and monitor cell status. This platform has shown promising translation potential for cell therapy. The findings are applicable to design and fabricate unique nanotherapeutics for a number of disease in the brain, including brain cancer and stroke.