Method and system for tomographic imaging using fluorescent proteins

Abstract

A system for optical tomography includes an apparent light source adapted to project excitation light toward a specimen having fluorescent proteins therein, wherein the excitation light enters the specimen becoming intrinsic light within the specimen, wherein the intrinsic light is adapted to excite fluorescent light from the fluorescent proteins, and wherein the intrinsic light and the fluorescent light are diffuse. A method of optical tomography includes generating the excitation light with the apparent light source, wherein the intrinsic light and the fluorescent light are diffuse.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates generally to optical tomography, and more particularly to methods and systems for extracting quantitative three-dimensional molecular and biological information from living specimens using fluorescent proteins. Background technique [0002] Fluorescent proteins (FPs) are important reporters for different biomedical applications. In some existing applications, engineered FPs are probed using epifluorescence, confocal (microscopy) or reflectance (whole animal) imaging. [0003] Epi-fluorescence, confocal microscopy, depends on coherent (non-diffusing) light projected onto and reflected from the specimen. Because microscopy requires intrinsically coherent light, this technique can only image small depths (eg, less than 1 mm) into a specimen. At deeper imaging depths, light is known to start to diffuse, making microscopy ineffective at deeper imaging depths. [0004] Reflected fluorescence imaging has been shown to be usefu...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Room temperature or moderately cooled CCD cameras are known to have high levels of dark (thermal) noise, which often limits the quality of the final optical tomography image

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