Quantitative fluorescence tomography using a trimodality system: in vivo validation

Abstract

Abstract.A fully integrated trimodality fluorescence, diffuse optical, and x-ray computed tomography ͑FT/DOT/ XCT͒ system for small animal imaging is reported in this work. The main purpose of this system is to obtain quantitatively accurate fluorescence concentration images using a multimodality approach. XCT offers anatomical information, while DOT provides the necessary background optical property map to improve FT image accuracy. The quantitative accuracy of this trimodality system is demonstrated in vivo. In particular, we show that a 2-mm-diam fluorescence inclusion located 8 mm deep in a nude mouse can only be localized when functional a priori information from DOT is available. However, the error in the recovered fluorophore concentration is nearly 87%. On the other hand, the fluorophore concentration can be accurately recovered within 2% error when both DOT functional and XCT structural a priori information are utilized together to guide and constrain the FT reconstruction algorithm.

Parallel multigrid solver of radiative transfer equation for photon transport via graphics processing unit

“…A possible solution is to consider the multi-GPU parallelization. On the other hand, the current GPU solver will allow us to efficiently study a few RTE based inverse problems, [17][18][19][20] so that we can assess the potential gain in the imaging accuracy due to RTE. In addition, we will also spend time to write user documents and develop user-friendly interfaces to share this solver with the community.…”

Performance Evaluation of <italic>a Priori</italic> Information on Reconstruction of Fluorescence Molecular Tomography

“…Here, functional a priori information is defined as the optical properties (absorption coefficient and scattering coefficient) of the tissues/medium, which are used to compute the accurate forward model. Further, by using functional a priori information combined with structural a priori information, Lin et al quantitatively recovered the fluorophore's concentration within the imaged object [11]. In their work, the optical properties were explicitly acquired by diffuse optical tomography (DOT).…”

“…Besides, in optical tomography, the distribution of fluorophore is computed by minimizing the misfit between the experimental measurements and the measurements predicated by forward model. Hence the reconstruction accuracy of FMT can also be improved if a appropriate functional a priori information is taken into account [11], [14], [15]. Here, functional a priori information is defined as the optical properties (absorption coefficient and scattering coefficient) of the tissues/medium, which are used to compute the accurate forward model.…”

Improved sparse reconstruction for fluorescence molecular tomography with L_1/2 regularization

“…FMT allows for three-dimensional localization and quantification of fluorescence distribution of targets in small animals to resolve biological processes at molecular and cellular levels [6][7][8][9]. This takes place through modeling of near infrared (NIR) light propagation in biological tissues with a forward transportation model, and solving an inverse problem for recovering the distribution of fluorophore concentration from boundary measurements.…”