Hyperspectral fluorescence tomography of quantum dots

摘要

Hyperspectral excitation-resolved fluorescence tomography (HEFT) exploits the spectrally-dependent absorption properties of biological tissue for recovering the unknown three-dimensional (3D) fluorescent reporter distribution inside tissue. Only a single light source with macro-illumination and wavelength-discrimination is required for the purpose of light emission stimulation and 3D image reconstruction. HEFT is built on fluorescent sources with a relatively broad spectral absorption profile (quantum dots) and a light propagation model for strongly absorbing tissue between wavelengths 560 nm and 660 run (simplified spherical harmonics - SP_n, - equations). The measured partial current of fluorescence light is cast into an algebraic system of equations, which is solved for the unknown quantum dot distribution with an expectation-maximization (EM) method. HEFT requires no source-detector multiplexing for 3D image reconstruction and, hence, offers a technologically simple design.