IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2014 Jul;33(7):1434-46. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2014.2313405. Epub 2014 Mar 24.
The implementation of hybrid fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) and X-ray computed tomography (CT) has been shown to be a necessary development, not only for combining anatomical with functional and molecular contrast, but also for generating optical images of high accuracy. FMT affords highly sensitive 3-D imaging of fluorescence bio-distribution, but in stand-alone form it offers images of low resolution. It was shown that FMT accuracy significantly improves by considering anatomical priors from CT. Conversely, CT generally suffers from low soft tissue contrast. Therefore utilization of CT data as prior information in FMT inversion is challenging when different internal organs are not clearly differentiated. Instead, we combined herein FMT with emerging X-ray phase-contrast CT (PCCT). PCCT relies on phase shift differences in tissue to achieve soft tissue contrast superior to conventional CT. We demonstrate for the first time FMT-PCCT imaging of different animal models, where FMT and PCCT scans were performed in vivo and ex vivo, respectively. The results show that FMT-PCCT expands the potential of FMT in imaging lesions with otherwise low or no CT contrast, while retaining the cost benefits of CT and simplicity of hybrid device realizations. The results point to the most accurate FMT performance to date.
已经证明，混合荧光分子断层扫描（FMT）和 X 射线计算机断层扫描（CT）的实现不仅对于结合解剖学、功能和分子对比是必要的，而且对于生成高精度的光学图像也是必要的。FMT 提供了对荧光生物分布的高度敏感的 3D 成像，但在独立形式下，它提供的图像分辨率较低。已经表明，通过考虑 CT 的解剖先验，FMT 的准确性会显著提高。相反，CT 通常软组织对比度低。因此，当不同的内部器官不能清楚地区分时，将 CT 数据用作 FMT 反演中的先验信息是具有挑战性的。相反，我们在这里将 FMT 与新兴的 X 射线相衬 CT（PCCT）相结合。PCCT 依赖于组织中的相位偏移差异来实现优于传统 CT 的软组织对比度。我们首次展示了不同动物模型的 FMT-PCCT 成像，其中 FMT 和 PCCT 扫描分别在体内和体外用进行。结果表明，FMT-PCCT 扩展了 FMT 在成像低对比度或无对比度病变的潜力，同时保留了 CT 的成本效益和混合设备实现的简单性。结果表明，这是迄今为止最准确的 FMT 性能。
