Molecular imaging using time resolved fluorescence

Abstract

Molecular imaging combines the use of disease targeted contrast agents with advanced imaging techniques to visualize disease processes in whole living organisms from the small animal to the human scale. Optical techniques are emerging as promising tools for molecular imaging by providing functional contrast, and are particularly attractive given the spectral and fluorescence lifetime tunability of near infrared fluorophores.
This allows the exciting possibility of multiplexing using fluorescence spectral and lifetime contrast. Our laboratory is focused on the development and application of whole-body time domain imaging techniques, with emphasis on exploiting lifetime contrast for enhanced sensitivity and specificity of disease detection in vivo. Although fluorescence lifetime imaging has been widely used in microscopy using fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM), the application of lifetime imaging for macroscopic subjects has been limited by several challenges. This presentation will outline some of these challenges and how they can be addressed using theoretical and experimental methods for time domain imaging in biological tissue. In particular, I will discuss a novel algorithm for tomographic lifetime multiplexing which allows the complete separation and 3-D localization of multiple lifetimes simultaneously present within biological tissue. Recent extensions of this work to the spatial frequency domain using modulated sources will also be discussed. I will then present in vivo applications of the technology for cancer and cardiac disease models using targetted near infrared fluorescent probes. I will finally discuss our recent progress towards clinical applications of fluorescence lifetime imaging using exogenous contrast agents.

Speaker

Anand T. N. Kumar
MGH, Harvard Medical School
United States

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