Subsurface fluorescence molecular tomography with prior information

Appl Opt. 2014 Jan 20;53(3):402-9. doi: 10.1364/AO.53.000402.

Abstract

Subsurface fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) is an emerging technique determining fluorescence distribution by tomographic means in reflectance geometry. However, due to the highly diffusive nature of the photon propagation in biological tissues and the influence of nearer source-detector separations, stand-alone subsurface FMT could not accurately reflect the fluorophore distributions. To overcome this drawback, we propose a method to improve the performance of fluorescence imaging by coupling x-ray computed tomography (XCT) and subsurface FMT modalities. A Laplacian-type regularization matrix generated with tissue prior information obtained from XCT images is used to guide the reconstruction of fluorophore distribution. Reconstruction results of both simulation and phantom studies showed that significant improvements in localization and demarcation of fluorescent targets can be obtained with the proposed method compared to the reconstruction method without structural prior information.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Equipment Design
  • Equipment Failure Analysis
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / instrumentation
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods
  • Information Storage and Retrieval / methods
  • Light
  • Microscopy, Fluorescence / instrumentation*
  • Microscopy, Fluorescence / methods*
  • Molecular Imaging / instrumentation*
  • Molecular Imaging / methods*
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Scattering, Radiation
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Tomography, X-Ray Computed / instrumentation*
  • Tomography, X-Ray Computed / methods*