Tomographic Cherenkov-excited luminescence scanned imaging with multiple pinhole beams recovered via back-projection reconstruction.

Cherenkov-excited luminescence scanned imaging (CELSI) is achieved with a clinical linear accelerator during external beam radiotherapy to map out molecular luminescence intensity or lifetime in tissue. In order to realize a deeper imaging depth with a reasonable spatial resolution in CELSI, we optimized the original scanning procedure to complete this in a way similar to x-ray computed tomography and with image reconstruction from maximum-likelihood expectation maximization and multi-pinhole irradiation for parallelization. Resolution phantom studies showed that a 0.3 mm diameter capillary tube containing 0.01 nM luminescent nanospheres could be recognized at a depth of 21 mm into tissue-like media. Small animal imaging with a 1 mm diameter cylindrical target demonstrated that fast 3D data acquisition can be achieved by this multi-pinhole collimator approach to image high-resolution luminescence through a whole animal.

切伦科夫激发发光扫描成像（CELSI）是在外部束放射治疗期间利用临床直线加速器实现的，用于绘制组织中的分子发光强度或寿命图。为了在CELSI中以合理的空间分辨率实现更深的成像深度，我们优化了原始扫描程序，以类似于X射线计算机断层扫描的方式完成，并通过最大似然期望最大化和多针孔照射进行平行化的图像重建。分辨率体模研究表明，在类似组织的介质中深度为21毫米处，可以识别出含有0.01 nM发光纳米球的直径为0.3毫米的毛细管。对直径为1毫米的圆柱形目标进行的小动物成像表明，通过这种多针孔准直器方法可以实现快速的3D数据采集，从而对整个动物进行高分辨率发光成像。