The diagnosis of cancer and photothermal therapy improve drastically with the implementation of nanotechnology. Different types of nanoparticles, that is, gold silica nanoshells, nanorods and nanospheres of diverse shapes and geometries, are used widely in the photothermal therapy of cancerous cells and nodules. ...This review focuses on the combinatorial cancer therapy using optical properties of nanogold with different shapes and geometries, and their therapeutic applications in cancer diagnosis, photothermal therapy, cancer imaging and targeted drug delivery....