Pimpalkhare Monish, Chen Jin, Venugopal Vivek, Intes Xavier
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590, USA.
Int J Biomed Imaging. 2012;2012:942326. doi: 10.1155/2012/942326. Epub 2012 Nov 8.
We investigated the potential of fluorescence molecular tomography to image ex vivo samples collected from a large animal model, in this case, a dog spine. Wide-field time-gated fluorescence tomography was employed to assess the impact of multiview acquisition, data type, and intrinsic optical properties on the localization and quantification accuracy in imaging a fluorescent inclusion in the intervertebral disk. As expected, the TG data sets, when combining early and late gates, provide significantly better performances than the CW data sets in terms of localization and quantification. Moreover, the use of multiview imaging protocols led to more accurate localization. Additionally, the incorporation of the heterogeneous nature of the tissue in the model to compute the Jacobians led to improved imaging performances. This preliminary imaging study provides a proof of concept of the feasibility of quantitatively imaging complex ex vivo samples nondestructively and with short acquisition times. This work is the first step towards employing optical molecular imaging of the spine to detect and characterize disc degeneration based on targeted fluorescent probes.
我们研究了荧光分子断层扫描技术对从大型动物模型（在本案例中为犬脊柱）采集的离体样本进行成像的潜力。采用宽场时间门控荧光断层扫描技术，评估多视角采集、数据类型和固有光学特性对椎间盘内荧光内含物成像的定位和定量准确性的影响。正如预期的那样，在定位和定量方面，当结合早期和晚期门控时，时间门控（TG）数据集比连续波（CW）数据集具有显著更好的性能。此外，使用多视角成像协议可实现更精确的定位。此外，在模型中纳入组织的异质性以计算雅可比矩阵，可提高成像性能。这项初步成像研究证明了对复杂离体样本进行无损且短采集时间的定量成像的可行性概念。这项工作是迈向利用脊柱光学分子成像基于靶向荧光探针检测和表征椎间盘退变的第一步。
