Digital micromirror applied to laminar optical tomography

用于小动物的漫射光学和分子成像的最新进展和增加的商业产品为分子生物学界提供了显著的益处。血液的内源性对比度已被用于对神经元激活和血管隔室进行成像。例如，内在成像（反射计）可用于以高图像分辨率（10 µm平面分辨率）监测开放皮层表面（100-400 µm深度）的神经元激活。基于光纤的系统可以以空间分辨率为代价对更深的结构进行成像，这是由于光传播的漫射性质以及与相机相比时所进行的离散数量的测量。此外，目前的技术缺乏量化，由于异质性的吸收和散射properties的tissues.The目前的建议，旨在解决这些问题，通过开发一种新的快速成像器的基础上优化的空间分辨率高达8 mm的深度的数字微镜。该想法遵循最近在3D层流光学层析成像（LOD）上所做的工作，其中使用照明和检测位置的高密度组合与漫射光学层析成像组合以高速扫描组织，以恢复更高分辨率的图像。在这里，我们建议通过使用数字微镜来产生特定的光图案和检测来进一步重建图像，从而进一步推进这项工作。

Recent progress and increased commercial offerings for diffuse optical and molecular imaging for small animals has provided significant benefits to the molecular biology community. Endogenous contrast of blood has been used to image neuronal activation and vascular compartments. For example intrinsic imaging (reflectometry) can be used to monitor neuronal activation at the surface of the open cortex (100-400 µm depth) with high image resolution (10 µm plane resolution). Fibre based systems can image deeper structures at the price of spatial resolution due to the diffuse nature of light propagation and the discrete number of measurements taken when compared to a camera. Moreover present techniques lack quantification due to the heterogeneous absorption and scattering properties of tissues.The present proposal aims to resolve some of these issues by developing a new fast imager based on digital micro-mirrors optimized for spatial resolution up to depths reaching 8mm. The idea follows on recent work done on 3D Laminar Optical Tomography (LOD) where a high density combination of illumination and detection positions were used to scan tissues at high speed in combination with diffuse optical tomography to recover images at higher resolution. Here we propose to further this work by using digital micro-mirrors to generate specific patterns of light and detection to further the image reconstruction.