Bioluminescent imaging has proven to be a valuable tool formonitoring physiological and pathological activities at cellularand molecular levels in living small animals. Using biologicaltechniques, target cells can be tagged with reporters encodingseveral kinds of luciferase enzymes, which generate characteristicphotons in a wide spectrum covering the infrared range. Part ofthe diffused light can reach the body surface of the small animal,be separated into several spectral bands using appropriatefilters, and collected by a sensitive CCD camera. Here we presenta bioluminescence tomography (BLT) method for a bioluminescentsource reconstruction from multispectral data measured on theexternal surface, and demonstrate the advantages of multispectralBLT in a numerical study using a heterogeneous mouse chestphantom. The results show that the multispectral approachsignificantly improves the accuracy and stability of the BLTreconstruction even if the data are highly noisy.
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