Niedre Mark, Ntziachristos Vasilis
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2009;2009:6331-4. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2009.5333167.
Fluorescence mediated tomography allows quantitative, three-dimensional imaging of optical reporter probes in whole animals and is therefore emerging as a powerful molecular imaging tool. The achievable image quality in fluorescence tomography is limited by the high-degree of light scatter in biological tissue. Time-gated detection of early-arriving and therefore minimally-scattered photons transmitted through diffusive tissue is one strategy for minimizing the effects of light scatter. In this work, we performed full-angle tomographic imaging of mice implanted with fluorescent tubes using time-gated detection of early- and later-arriving photons. This was achieved using a femtosecond laser and a high-speed, time-gated intensified CCD imager. We demonstrate that the early-transmitted fluorescent photons allow improved visualization of the fluorescence distribution, even when considering individual projections through the animal. High-fidelity image reconstruction using 72 projections in 5-degree steps using early-arriving photons is also demonstrated.
荧光介导断层扫描能够对全动物体内的光学报告探针进行定量三维成像，因此正成为一种强大的分子成像工具。荧光断层扫描中可实现的图像质量受生物组织中高度光散射的限制。对通过扩散组织传输的早到且因此散射最小的光子进行时间选通检测是一种将光散射影响降至最低的策略。在这项工作中，我们使用对早到和晚到光子的时间选通检测，对植入荧光管的小鼠进行了全角断层成像。这是通过使用飞秒激光和高速、时间选通增强型电荷耦合器件成像器实现的。我们证明，即使考虑穿过动物的单个投影，早传输的荧光光子也能改善荧光分布的可视化。还展示了使用早到光子以5度步长进行72次投影的高保真图像重建。
