Abstract
Small animal diffuse fluorescence tomography (DFT) has significant potential as a preclinical research tool, but imaging resolution is limited by the high-degree of light scatter in biological tissue. In particular, resolution is generally accepted to be limited to about 10% of the physical length being imaged for continuous wave instruments. It is well understood that photon scatter between a source and detector pair can be effectively reduced by measurement of so-called “early-arriving photons” (EPs) from a rapid pulsed laser. Herein, photons that traverse the medium first take more direct paths than the bulk photon population. Previous investigators – including our group – have shown that measurement of EPs can reduce detected photon scatter by about 40-60% in small animals with a corresponding increase in resolution [1,2]. However, we recently demonstrated experimentally that the finite (non-ideal) temporal response of time-resolved DFT systems limits the obtainable imaging resolution improvement compared to those predicted by Monte Carlo models of photon propagation [3]. This motivated us to evaluate new fast detector types – in particular fast avalanche photo-diodes (APDs) –in an attempt to obtain further resolution improvement.
© 2013 Optical Society of America
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