Non-contact fluorescence optical tomography with scanning area illumination

This contribution describes a novel non-contact fluorescence optical tomography scheme which utilizes multiple area illumination patterns, to reduce the illposedness of the inverse problem involved in recovering interior fluorescence yield distribution in biological tissue from boundary fluorescence measurements. Multiple excitation source illumination patterns are simulated by Gaussian beam sources scanning the simulated tissue phantom surface. Area measurements of fluorescence amplitude and phase are collected on the illumination plane. Multiple measurement data sets generated by scanning the excitation sources are processed simultaneously to generate the interior fluorescence distribution in tissue by implementing a dual adaptive finite element based fluorescence tomography algorithm in a parallel framework suitable for multiprocessor computers. Image reconstructions for multiple fluorescent targets (5 mm diameter) embedded in a 512 ml simulated tissue phantom are demonstrated