A statistical approach to inverting the Born ratio.

We examine the problem of fluorescence molecular tomography using the normalized Born approximation, termed herein the Born ratio, from a statistical perspective. Experimentally verified noise models for received signals at the excitation and emission wavelengths are combined to generate a stochastic model for the Born ratio. This model is then utilized within a maximum likelihood framework to obtain an inverse solution based on a fixed point iteration. Results are presented for three experimental scenarios: phantom data with a homogeneous background, phantoms implanted within a small animal, and in vivo data using an exogenous probe.