A new 3D fluorescence imaging method

Here we propose a novel fluorescence optical tomography method. In this method, ultrashort laser pulses are used to excite the fluorescent dye concentrated at the tumor region, and the temporal fluorescence light signals are detected around the boundaries of the target tissue. The temporal information of the fluorescence light intensity is employed to construct tomographic and 3D images of the fluorescent radiation in the tumor region. Two new concepts, i.e., solid geometric correlation property and photon migration statistic property, are introduced to set up the criteria for probing the location and shape of the tumor. This method can visualize an abnormal region in turbid tissues conveniently, simply, efficiently and effectively. It does not require a complicated image reconstruction procedure such that it only takes a few minutes in the computation of image construction. We demonstrate its feasibility in imaging a 4×4×4mm³ tumor embedded at the center of a 20×20×20mm³ rectangular tissue in this paper.