Abstract

Bioluminescence tomography (BLT) is used to localize and quantify bioluminescent sources in a small living animal. By advancing bioluminescent imaging to a tomographic framework, it helps to diagnose diseases, monitor therapies and facilitate drug development. In this paper, we establish a direct linear relationship between measured surface photon density and an unknown bioluminescence source distribution by using a finite-element method based on the diffusion approximation to the photon propagation in biological tissue. We develop a novel reconstruction algorithm to recover the source distribution. This algorithm incorporates a priori knowledge to define the permissible source region in order to enhance numerical stability and efficiency. Simulations with a numerical mouse chest phantom demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed BLT algorithm and reveal its performance in terms of source location, density, and robustness against noise. Lastly, BLT experiments are performed to identify the location and power of two light sources in a physical mouse chest phantom.

© 2005 Optical Society of America

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History
Original Manuscript: July 11, 2005
Revised Manuscript: August 16, 2005
Published: September 5, 2005

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Author Affiliations

Lihong Wang

Texas A&M University

Wenxiang Cong, Ge Wang, Durairaj Kumar, Yi Liu, Eric Hoffman, Geoffrey McLennan, Paul McCray, Joseph Zabner, Alexander Cong

University of Iowa

Ming Jiang

University of Iowa and Peking University

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