Developing a free-space fluorescence molecular tomography system

Fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) gains increasing interests in deep tissue imaging. Here we report a novel FMT system setup with full angel projections. In this system, a tungsten-halogen lamp is applied as illumination, while a scientific complementary metal oxide semiconductor (sCMOS) is used as a detecting device. With a unique line-pattern illumination and a high sensitivity sCMOS, our FMT system can complete data acquisition over 36 perspective angles along the animal within 10 minutes. We also employ a novel transparent animal bed, which is suitable to hold the animal for long time experiments. Both phantom and in vivo animal experiments have been studied, and our results demonstrate this FMT system has a great potential for small animal study. In addition, our design allows this FMT system to be easily applied in either stand-alone fluorescent systems or combined with other molecular imaging methods.