Fluorescence optical tomography: Some directions and results

Abstract: In biomedical imaging, the need for functional information in addition to the structural aspect becomes critical in early detection of anomalies. Fluorescence optical tomography(FOT)is one such modality that uses the phenomenon of fluorescence to image functional/physiological as well as morphological aspects of tissue. Fluorescence optical tomography makes use of the fact that certain fluorescent dyes and proteins, upon being excited by radiation of a given wavelength (excitation wavelength) re-emit photons at another wavelength (emission wavelength).

We will talk about three kinds of FOT useful in early cancer detection, reconstructions based on a "mezzanine" forward model (the SP3 approximation) between the full radiative transfer equation and the its diffusion approximation, a dynamic reconstruction problem to image the pharmacokinetic rates of leakage of an injected fluorophore into affected tissue, and reconstructions in a multimodal fluorescent photo-acoustic tomography (FPAT) setting.