Fluorescence diffuse optical tomographic system for arbitrary shaped small animals

This paper presents a method based on fluorescence diffuse optical tomography for reconstructing the fluorescence yield of heterogeneous and arbitrary shaped medium such as small animals. The experimental set-up is presented and the associated reconstruction method making mouse inspection without immersion in optical index matching liquid (Intralipid and ink) possible is detailed. Some phantom experiments have been carried out to characterize this new system and to validate its use for non immersed heterogeneous media and a first experiment on a mouse is presented. These results validate further use of our system for biological studies of small animals.