Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 10084, China.
Ann Biomed Eng. 2010 Nov;38(11):3440-8. doi: 10.1007/s10439-010-0093-4. Epub 2010 Jun 11.
Challenges remain in imaging complete dynamic physiological processes in vivo through the whole small animal body using fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT). In this article, a novel non-contact full-angle FMT system that enables whole-body simultaneous imaging of small animals is presented. The whole-body simultaneous imaging ability is achieved by employing a line-shaped parallel excitation source, which can provide extended spatial sampling dataset to reconstruct multiple fluorescent targets distributed in whole animal body during one full-angle FMT imaging process. The key performances of this system were evaluated by a series of experiments. Quantitation linearity for over two orders of magnitude of fluorescence markers concentration was demonstrated, and an accessible simultaneous imaging domain of 4.0 x 1.5 cm² could be achieved utilizing the parallel excitation pattern. Moreover, the in vivo imaging feasibility and performance were validated by localizing two fluorescent targets implanted at different positions of a nude mouse. The results suggest that compared with conventional single point excitation FMT system, the proposed system can achieve a whole-body simultaneous imaging domain and impart the ability to image complete dynamic physiological processes in vivo.
使用荧光分子断层成像（FMT）在体内对整个小动物进行完整的动态生理过程成像仍然面临挑战。本文提出了一种新的非接触式全角度 FMT 系统，能够对小动物进行全身同时成像。通过采用线状平行激发源，实现了全身同时成像能力，该激发源可以在一次全角度 FMT 成像过程中提供扩展的空间采样数据集，以重建分布在整个动物体内的多个荧光目标。通过一系列实验评估了该系统的关键性能。证明了荧光标记浓度超过两个数量级的定量线性度，并且可以利用平行激发模式实现可访问的同时成像域 4.0 x 1.5 cm²。此外，通过定位植入裸鼠不同位置的两个荧光目标，验证了体内成像的可行性和性能。结果表明，与传统的单点激发 FMT 系统相比，所提出的系统能够实现全身同时成像域，并赋予体内完整动态生理过程成像的能力。
