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

Non-contact Fluorescence Diffuse Optical Tomography (FDOT) is rapidly becoming an important tool for small animal research, since it is able to display the 3D distribution of near infrared fluorescent probes in the whole body. FDOT, 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 FDOT reconstruction algorithm to improve its performance. With these goals in mind, we have built a proof-of-concept FDOT-CT hybrid machine that combines the high-resolution anatomy of CT with the functional information provided by FDOT.