Combined magnetic resonance and bioluminescence imaging of live mice.
We perform combined magnetic resonance and bioluminescence imaging of live mice for the purpose of improving the accuracy of bioluminescence tomography. The imaging is performed on three live nude mice in which tritium-powered light sources are surgically implanted. High-resolution magnetic resonance images and multispectral, multiview bioluminescence images are acquired in the same session. An anatomical model is constructed by segmenting the magnetic resonance images for all major tissues. The model is subsequently registered with nonlinear transformations to the 3-D light exittance (exiting intensity) surface map generated from the luminescence images. A Monte Carlo algorithm, along with a set of tissue optical properties obtained from in vivo measurements, is used to solve the forward problem. The measured and simulated light exittance images are found to differ by a factor of up to 2. The greatest cause of this moderate discrepancy is traced to the small errors in source positioning, and to a lesser extent to the optical properties used for the tissues. Discarding the anatomy and using a homogeneous model leads to a marginally worse agreement between the simulated and measured data.
Allard
Mathieu
M
Hospital for Sick Children, Mouse Imaging Centre, 555 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8, Canada. mallard@sickkids.ca
Côté
Daniel
D
Davidson
Lorinda
L
Dazai
Jun
J
Henkelman
R Mark
RM
D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008163:Luminescent Measurements / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D008819:Mice, Nude; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013382:Subtraction Technique; D041622:Tomography, Optical / Q000379:methods*; D051598:Whole Body Imaging / Q000379:methods*