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A Parallel Excitation Based Fluorescence Molecular Tomography System for Whole-Body Simultaneous Imaging of Small Animals

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Abstract

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 × 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.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 60831003, 30930092, 30872633; the Tsinghua-Yue-Yuen Medical Science Foundation; the National Basic Research Program of China (973) under Grant No. 2006CB705700; the National High-Tech Research and Development Program of China (863) under Grant No. 2006AA020803.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 10084, China

    Fei Liu, Xin Liu, Daifa Wang, Bin Zhang & Jing Bai

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  1. Fei Liu
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  2. Xin Liu
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  4. Bin Zhang
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Correspondence to Jing Bai.

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Associate Editor Daniel Elson oversaw the review of this article.

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Liu, F., Liu, X., Wang, D. et al. A Parallel Excitation Based Fluorescence Molecular Tomography System for Whole-Body Simultaneous Imaging of Small Animals. Ann Biomed Eng 38, 3440–3448 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-010-0093-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-010-0093-4

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