DOT guided fluorescence molecular tomography of arbitrarily shaped objects.

The authors demonstrate an approach for truly quantitative three-dimensional fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) of arbitrarily shaped objects where the distribution of optical properties is obtained using diffuse optical tomography (DOT). The method is tested and evaluated using phantom geometries mimicking mouse anatomic structures. The experiments were conducted using the authors' optical-fiber-free, multiangle transmission system. The results indicate that with the knowledge of optical property distribution, the accuracy of the recovered fluorophore absorption coefficient (mu(a(x-->m of indocyanine green is improved significantly over that without such a priori information using the authors' finite element reconstruction approach. In particular, the absolute value of mu(a(x-->m)) from their DOT guided FMT is quantitatively consistent with that obtained with spectroscopic methods.