Design and development of a co-planar fluorescence and X-ray tomograph

Abstract

Non-contact Fluorescence Oiffuse Optical Tomography (FOOT) is rapidly becoming an important tool for small animal research, since it is able to display the 30 distribution of near infrared fluorescent probes in the whole body. FOOT, like other functional and molecular imaging techniques (PET, SPECT), lacks anatomical information, limiting the resolution of analyses of living systems. Furthermore, anatomical information from the subject under study can be used as a priori information for the FOOT reconstruction algorithm to improve its performance. With these goals in mind, we have built a proof-of-concept FOOT-CT hybrid machine that combines the high-resolution anatomy of CT with the functional information provided by FOOT.