title: Feasibility of in vivo imaging of fluorescent proteins using lifetime contrast.
abstract: We show that fluorescence lifetime is a powerful contrast mechanism that can enhance the whole-body imaging of fluorescent proteins (FPs), in the presence of background tissue autofluorescence (AF). The nonexponential AF decay is characterized from time-domain (TD) measurements on multiple nude mice and separated from the FP fluorescence using a linear fit to a priori basis functions. We illustrate this approach using an orthotopic mouse tumor model of breast adenocarcinoma. We also report that four commonly used FPs show distinct lifetimes, indicating their suitability for in vivo lifetime multiplexing. These results suggest the potential for exploiting fluorescence lifetime for imaging FPs for a variety of whole-body small-animal imaging applications.
authors: Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA. ankumar@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
authors: Anand T N
authors: AT
authors: Kumar
authors: Euiheon
authors: E
authors: Chung
authors: Scott B
authors: SB
authors: Raymond
authors: Jeroen A J M
authors: JA
authors: van de Water
authors: Khalid
authors: K
authors: Shah
authors: Dai
authors: D
authors: Fukumura
authors: Rakesh K
authors: RK
authors: Jain
authors: Brian J
authors: BJ
authors: Bacskai
authors: David A
authors: DA
authors: Boas
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005241:Feathers; D005453:Fluorescence; D006801:Humans; D008164:Luminescent Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D051379:Mice; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D008164:Luminescent Proteins