Spectrally resolved bioluminescence tomography with adaptive finite element analysis: methodology and simulation

Abstract

As a molecular imaging technique, bioluminescence tomography (BLT) with its highly sensitive detection and facile operation can significantly reveal molecular and cellular information in vivo at the whole-body small animal level. However, because of complex photon transportation in biological tissue and boundary detection data with high noise, bioluminescent sources in deeper positions generally cannot be localized. In our previous work, we used achromatic or monochromatic measurements and an a priori permissible source region strategy to develop a multilevel adaptive finite-element algorithm. In this paper, we propose a spectrally solved tomographic algorithm with a posteriori permissible source region selection. Multispectral measurements, and anatomical and optical information first deal with the nonuniqueness of BLT and constrain the possible solution of source reconstruction. The use of adaptive mesh refinement and permissible source region based on a posteriori measures not only avoids the dimension disaster arising from the multispectral measured data but also reduces the ill-posedness of BLT and therefore improves the reconstruction quality. Reconsideration of the optimization method and related modifications further enhance reconstruction robustness and efficiency. We also incorporate into the method some improvements for reducing computational burdens. Finally, using a whole-body virtual mouse phantom, we demonstrate the capability of the proposed BLT algorithm to reconstruct accurately bioluminescent sources in deeper positions. In terms of optical property errors and two sources of discernment in deeper positions, this BLT algorithm represents the unique predominance for BLT reconstruction.