MOLECULAR TOMOGRAPHIC IMAGING OF LYMPH NODES WITH NIR FLUORESCENCE

This contribution describes a system and method for tomographically imaging lymph nodes marked with a lymph endothelium targeting fluorescence reporter. A novel scanning NIR laser line source was employed to acquire multiple sets of boundary fluorescence measurements in the groin region of a Yorkshire swine. The source light shaped into a linear profile was modulated at 100 MHz and a gain modulated homodyne ICCD detection system was used to collect area measurements of fluorescence amplitude and phase on the illumination plane. Multiple measurement data sets generated by scanning the excitation sources were processed simultaneously to generate the interior fluorescence distribution in tissue by implementing a parallelized dual adaptive finite element based fluorescence tomography algorithm. Three dimensional localization of the approximately 2.5 cm deep inguinal lymph node in the swine groin following injection of 100 muL of a lymph targeting hyaluronan-indocyanine green conjugate dye is demonstrated.