A Combined MR-Fluorescence Tomography System For Quantitative Small Animal Imaging: In Vivo Validation

Yuting Lin¹, Michael Ghijsen¹, Orhan Nalcioglu¹, Gultekin Gulsen¹

Multi-modality imaging is becoming a trend in developing new generation in vivo imaging techniques. We have developed a hybrid frequency domain fluorescence tomography (FT) and magnetic resonance imaging system (MRI) for small animal imaging. The main purpose of this system is to obtain quantitatively accurate fluorescence concentration and lifetime images from a time-resolved FT system using a multi-modality approach. In this study, we show that the concentration and lifetime of a fluorescent inclusion located 15 mm deep inside a rat can only be recovered within 5% when anatomical a priori information from MRI are available.