Quantitative bioluminescence imaging of tumor-targeting bacteria in living animals.

We describe a protocol for imaging bacterial luciferase (Lux)-expressing bacteria in small living animals. In this protocol, light emitted by Lux-expressing bacteria is detected and monitored by a cooled charge-coupled device detector. When these bacteria are administered to animals, it provides a potentially valuable approach to generate sensitive whole-body images with extremely low background. This imaging technology should enable the real-time monitoring of bacterial migration into both primary and metastatic tumors in several different mouse tumor models at a strong quantification power.