Two-dimensional bioluminescence tomography: numerical simulations and phantom experiments

The reconstruction of internal light sources in bioluminescence tomography (BLT) is a challenging inverse problem because of the limited amount of information available compared with that for other kinds of tomography such as fluorescence tomography in which external illumination sources are used. We demonstrated previously, using phantom experiments, that a target containing luciferases could be detected tomographically when the target was located relatively close to the imaging boundary. Here we describe an improved BLT reconstruction method that can detect luciferase-containing targets located anywhere within an imaging domain. The method is tested with numerical simulations and further confirmed with several phantom experiments.