Fluorescence lifetime imaging through turbid media reconstructed in the Fourier domain using time-gated imaging data

摘要

We report a novel technique to reconstruct fluorescence lifetime distributions in turbid media by using Fourier domain reconstruction of time gated imaging data. The time gating provides sufficient temporal resolution to determine short fluorescence lifetimes while the use of the Fourier transform, which is essential for the time de-convolution of the system of the integral equations employed in the reconstruction, permits a relatively rapid reconstruction of 3-D tomographic data. This approach has been applied experimentally to reconstruct fluorescent lifetime distributions corresponding to phantoms with wells filled with fluorescent dyes embedded inside highly scattering slabs. In practice, the scattering medium can itself be fluorescent and we also suggest a simple iterative technique to account for background autofluorescence, which we have also tested experimentally.