Spectrally resolved fluorescence diffuse tomography of biological tissues

Spectrally resolved fluorescence diffuse tomography (SFDT) is demonstrated to be an effective approach to the reconstruction of the fluorescent agent distribution in biological tissues. Analysis of the measured optical power spectrum enables more accurate fluorophore localisation in solving the inverse tomography problem, because the dispersion of the optical parameters of the imaging subject leads to characteristic changes in the shape of its fluorescence spectrum. The SFDT system built by us includes a common optical fibre output of light sources and a single fibre input of the detector in an on-axis configuration, and an electromechanical scanner. The system enables studies of laboratory animals having tumours labelled with various fluorescent agents (fluorescent proteins, quantum dots and others). The first in vivo experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of tumour detection and localisation in laboratory animals by SFDT.