Analysis of In Vivo Radachlorin Accumulation through FLIM-Assisted Examination of Ex Vivo Histological Samples

Abstract

We report an investigation of the in vivo accumulation of Radachlorin photosensitizer in a murine model in several types of normal and tumor tissues based on an FLIM-assisted analysis of fluorescence intensity images, time-resolved fluorescence signals, and phasor plots. Experiments were performed on ex vivo histological samples of normal and tumor tissues. It was shown that the investigation of fluorescence intensity distributions combined with that of time-resolved fluorescence images can be used for qualitative and—under some limitations—quantitative analyses of the relative uptake of this photosensitizer in tissues. The phasor plot representations of time-resolved fluorescence signals were shown to be suitable for identification of the accumulation of predominant photosensitizers in tissues.